


Almost Home

by qianwanshi



Series: Dreams [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Baby, Fix-It, Get Together, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Weird dreams, alternate dream universe, clint is maybe depressed, coping with death and recovering, definitely not AoS compliant, discussion of canon death, he does his best, no depiction of death, semi cap:tws compliant, sweet domestic life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6531502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qianwanshi/pseuds/qianwanshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint goes to sleep in New York (alone) and wakes up somewhere completely different (very much not alone).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to try coming up with some kind of posting schedule that I can hopefully stick to, but I couldn't hold myself back from posting any longer. So here we go! 
> 
> Thanks to me for actually writing something, to Laura for helping me out and playing with me and feeding my brain, and to you if you read this and stick around :3

Clint comes into awareness slowly, feeling much more groggy than he should be since he actually managed to roll into his bed at a half-decent hour the night before. He shifts, planning to roll over and bury his head under his pillow to sleep longer when he realizes that he’s hearing someone breathing softly next to him in bed.

Considering that when Clint fell asleep he was completely and pitifully alone in his shitty empty apartment, this is quite unusual and does the job of waking him up very suddenly.

Moving slowly and staying calm as to not alert the other body in the room to his awareness, Clint rolls and shifts carefully to get a look at who is sleeping in his bed. It’s possible it could be another Avenger, he supposes. It hasn’t happened before, but one of them could have either made a mistake or gotten lonely and figured, hey, Clint’s a lonely guy, I’ll go there!

What he actually finds there manages somehow to be even more shocking than that.

Phil Coulson is in his bed, sleeping deep, snoring slightly, not dead.

Clint’s heart races hard and all attempts at keeping calm fly out the window when he leaps out of the bed. Taking a quick glance around the room reveals that this is not even the apartment he went to sleep in, but he has no time to think about that; Coulson is awake.

He looks angry. Sleepy angry, but angry.

“Clint, what-” He sounds confused, half asleep still. He lifts himself on one elbow to look over at the alarm clock next to their? No. The bed. It’s 6:41 AM. “Why are you up?”

Clint doesn’t answer. He can’t. He can’t get his brain to think of words to say about this moment.

This seems to get Coulson’s attention a little bit more, waking him up fully enough to look concerned. He starts to sit up, one finger rubbing hard at his eye and the blanket sliding away from him. He’s shirtless.

The noise Clint makes is probably embarrassing, but he doesn’t pay any attention to it. He definitely doesn’t pay any attention to Coulson asking if he’s okay. He backs up quickly, making a direct path into the attached bathroom and shutting the door behind him, finally feeling like he can breathe again.

“Clint?” He can still hear Coulson through the door.

He blurts out the first solid thing his mouth can form. “I’m just- I have to shit!” He gives himself a baffled look in the mirror above the sink.

Coulson doesn’t respond, but Clint can hear him moving around on the bed. He’s pretty sure he hears him make the tiniest breath of a laugh.

Okay, he bought himself a minute to try to gather his thoughts here into some understanding. So. He went to sleep just like every other day, but he woke up somewhere different. Somewhere different enough that Phil Coulson is alive and sleeps in his bed shirtless and squints at him from his pillow half asleep.

There haven’t been any fights with aliens or magic beams or super weirdos lately for him to find some reason for this. No one has zapped him with anything that may have altered reality in any way; he tends to stay very far away from Stark’s lab experiments on purpose.

So. Follow SHIELD protocol. That's what Natasha would tell him to do. He wracks his brain searching for if there even is protocol in the lengthy SHIELD handbook that covers this. He seems to remember an entire chapter dedicated to waking up in strange places that had been bookmarked for him specifically, but that was mostly about kidnappings and disappearances, not whatever the hell this is.

Fuck. 

He really should have read the whole handbook like Coulson was always yelling at him to do. 

Whatever is going on, Clint knows he has to stay alert but adapt. This place is, in its own way, very real. Or at least he knows it isn’t a dream, he’s able to perform all of his normal test activities just as well as in the real world. (He reads the back of the shampoo bottle four times just to be sure, hell, he even pinches his arm hard enough to bruise.) He needs to convincingly be the Clint of this world until he figures out what exactly is happening to him. Raise no suspicions, gather information, find a solution. Easy.

The bathroom doorknob jiggles suddenly and Clint damn near jumps out of his skin.

“Did you lock the door?” Coulson asks like that would be a very strange thing to do with a bathroom door. “Clint, can you hurry? I need to shave.”

Clint straightens himself out and reaches to open the door with a remarkably steady hand. Phil Coulson is still standing on the other side, looking solid and normal and mildly irritated. He’s wearing a shirt, now, which is at least one tiny ounce of a relief. He steps into the room, maneuvering easily around Clint and pulling a razor and shaving cream out of an overflowing cabinet.

He pauses just after he’s smoothed the first line of shaving cream across barely there stubble on his cheek when he catches Clint’s eyes through the mirror. A strange smile lifts the corners of his lips, staying even as he goes back to his shaving cream.

“You know,” Coulson says, his words distorted by the way he’s shifting his face around to reach everywhere he needs to. “As much as I enjoy you standing there staring at me blankly, you should go check the baby.”

Clint is pretty sure he would be less stunned after a solid punch to the face. By the Hulk. Fuck. There’s a baby?

He only realizes he should probably have responded verbally once he’s halfway through the unfamiliar apartment. As it is, he’d turned and left Coulson in the bathroom without a word.

It’s easy to find the baby’s room, unfortunately. The door is on the wall perpendicular to the bedroom he’d woken up in and it has a small handmade sign hanging on it that says ‘Emily’ next to the tiniest painted handprint Clint has ever laid eyes on.

Lifting a hand to knock, Clint rolls his eyes at himself and swings the door open.

It’s not a large room, painted a soothing green color and filled with soft toys and things Clint can’t even identify. In the center of the room is a crib, the chubby baby girl inside staring up at him expectantly. She must be around six or seven months old, Clint figures, based on his very minimal experience with babies. She’s awake, sitting up and reaching for the top bar of her crib like she has big plans on breaking out. 

“Hi,” Clint says lamely. The baby gurgles at him.

He takes a few steps toward the crib slowly, cautiously. Looking down at the baby, she's watching him just as closely while he assesses how to best get her out. He assumes she needs to be fed and changed or something.

Clint slides his hands under her armpits where he pauses for a second, almost scared of how _tiny_ and delicate she feels, before he lifts her out of the crib finally.

He stops with her held out in front of him for a second, no idea how he's supposed to hold her. He held a baby once, but it was smaller than this one and he'd had to cradle it's head carefully in his elbow. This one can hold her own head up but still seems too small to sit on his hip like he sees mothers holding their kids at the park when he goes.

Not that he even gets a chance to work it out, anyway. The kid starts screaming at him. Shrieking at an unbelievable volume with fat tears rolling down her round face. He continues to hold her straight out in front of him with no idea what to do.

“Please stop,” he tries just in case it might work. It doesn't. He's pretty sure the baby didn't even hear him over her own screams.

Thankfully, Coulson reappears. He's half dressed, light undershirt tucked into nice pants, and he's cooing.

“Aw, my baby, what's wrong?” He asks the baby sincerely as he pulls her out of Clint’s unsure hands. He holds her tight to his chest, Clint notes, hand on her back and one arm supporting her bum, so that's how you hold a baby that size.

He bounces and sways a little, clicking his tongue and kissing her forehead. The baby seems to calm down for him, hiccuping and gasping a little but no longer actively crying. Clint just stands there like an idiot. Trying not to feel the weird feeling in his chest at the sight of Phil Coulson with a baby held to his chest.

“I think someone’s hungry,” Coulson says still in his baby voice that still somehow sounds so much like the Phil he always knew before. 

He turns to Clint, looking like he's trying to hide any concern on his face. “I'll get her changed, I have her oatmeal out, you just have to mix it up from a warm bottle.” He says as if any of those words make any sense.

Clint nods with a tiny smile, trying to remember to be this Clint. This Clint has a baby and lives with Coulson and probably knows how to make baby oatmeal.

The kitchen is small and the baby oatmeal comes with instructions and measurements and Clint doesn't mess it up which feels like a small miracle. Coulson and Baby reappear now fully clothed and freshly diapered. Coulson clicks her into her high chair next to Clint’s chair at the kitchen table.

“Remember to alternate the oatmeal and the bottle,” Coulson says while pulling a jacket over his button up shirt. “It's easier for her that way.”

“Yeah,” Clint says softly. He smushes the rubber coated spoon around in the sticky soft oatmeal and tries to give a smile that says ‘I can be trusted alone with this baby’.

It seems to get some point across because Coulson is a lot closer in the next second with a small, soft smile on his face that Clint had never gotten to see before. One hand pushes through Clint’s hair, still a mess from when he'd jumped out of bed, and stops at a rest along the back of his neck.

Clint has to try very hard to not let himself lean into the touch before he remembers that he _should_ move into it.

“I'll call later,” Coulson says before Clint gets a chance to correct his reaction. He bends at the waist and presses a soft, quick kiss to Clint’s lips before turning to do the same to the baby’s forehead. 

Clint stares dumbly even as Coulson walks away toward the front door.

“See you after work!” He shouts over his shoulder. 

Clint blinks and turns the same dumb stare on the baby. She slaps her hands against the table part of her chair and shrieks once.

\----

The feeding goes better than expected, but as soon as they're done Clint is lost again. He lifts the baby-- Emily-- he has to start calling her by her name. He tries to cradle Emily against his chest in the same way that Coulson had earlier, but she starts screaming at him again. She only stops when he sets her, very, _very_ gently on a soft blanket with hanging toys that’s in the middle of the floor.

Clint has a feeling she knows he’s not her usual Clint. Either that or usual Clint is just as unprepared for babies as he is.

He has to do something, though, jesus. This would be so much easier to handle without being responsible for keeping another human alive.

A muffled dinging noise sounds from somewhere in the house and Clint’s ears perk at it.

“A phone!” He starts at a quick pace to look next to the bed he woke up in, where he always keeps his phone in his own reality. He pauses to make sure that Emily is still on her little blanket before he disappears fully into the bedroom.

The phone has a picture of Coulson holding Emily as the background and a calendar reminder about a dinner with Natasha. Clint could almost cry at seeing the familiar name.

He rushes back to the living room where Emily hasn’t moved from where she’s sitting up playing with her hanging toys, she’s apparently not very mobile yet.

Sitting on the couch with a heaving sigh, Clint works on the code to unlock the phone. He tries all his usuals before going for something more average. His own birthday is wrong, he doesn’t even know Emily’s birthday, Phil’s birthday does the trick. He has to take a moment after it works to press his face into his hands and try not to fall into hysterics.

Searching through the contacts reveals a pretty short list of friends, so at least that seems consistent between realities or realms or whatever the _hell_ this is. Natasha is in there, though, and he calls her without a second thought. He needs her.

She picks up after two rings, sounding cheerful and relaxed.

“Natasha,” he chokes, clears his throat and starts again. “Nat, you busy?”

“Mm, not really,” she answers. “What’s up?”

“Do you think- Could you maybe come over?” Clint feels awkward suddenly, knows that so far he’s doing a god awful job at his ‘adapt and blend in’ plan. “Emily is-”

His unsure pause is mostly from his inability to think complete thoughts, but he seems to put Natasha on edge.

“Is Emily okay?” She asks, sounding worried.

“Y-yeah, she’s fine.” Natasha sighs and Clint thinks she’s different here, too. His Natasha feels relief and worry all the time, but it’s not like she lets anyone see that about her. “I’m just not feeling great? I don’t want to get her sick too.”

“You do sound… off,” Natasha says. “I’ll come watch her for a while and let you rest.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Clint sighs out. The first relief he’s felt since waking up.

\---

Nat barely takes ten minutes before she’s knocking on Clint’s door. He answers with Emily back in his arms; she’s not screaming, but she doesn’t look happy either.

“There’s my chubby girl!” Nat scoops Emily out of his hold easily and bounces a little, making a her break into a wide gummy smile. “Hi, Clint,” she adds when she looks up and enters into the apartment, making noises at the baby. 

If Clint thought that Natasha’s willingness to openly express emotions over the phone was shocking, nothing could have prepared him for seeing her in person. She looks the same as his Natasha, mostly; short red hair with lots of curls, dressed fairly casual, same small hint of a smile. Only she's pregnant. Her belly is unmistakable even as it is hidden under the soft navy sweater.

He realizes he's staring a moment too late, he feels like that's all he's been doing since he woke up. 

“I look huge, don't I?” Nat asks him. She doesn't seem to be hurt about it, maybe a little grumpy.

“No! No, you look really good.” Clint is surprised by how much he really means it. He'd always heard about pregnant women glowing, but he's never seen it before, never expected to see it on Nat.

“How are you feeling? You look tired,” Nat changes the subject easily. Emily is drooling on her finger.

“Yeah, I'm tired.” Clint tries to be vague in replying. “Probably starting to catch something. I'll probably just sleep a while.”

He starts to head back toward the bedroom where he plans to hide for as long as possible, but Nat stops him one more time.

“How have you been doing with Emily?” She asks. “I know she still makes you nervous sometimes.”

That news actually comes as a huge relief, knowing he can definitely pull that part of his role here off easily.

“Um, yeah.” Clint smiles. “She's great. I'm just still getting used to it, I guess.”

Natasha smiles at him pleasantly. “You can always call on me if you need me. Go get some sleep.”

“Thanks, Nat,” Clint says.

\---

Closing the bedroom door behind himself, Clint kicks himself into action. Slow, careful, quiet action. 

The bedroom looks like a fairly normal bedroom for a couple, definitely furnished by Coulson based on everything actually matching and the blankets being color coordinated with the walls. Clint would never be able to manage that. The bed is even bigger than the one he has in Stark’s tower and there are side tables with lamps on either side. God, are they one of those couples that reads next to each other in bed under their own lamps? 

There's a pretty nice sized closet along one wall that seems to be split up systematically in some way he doesn't bother observing. Coulson again, probably. He can pick out what clothes belong to him; nothing so nice as what Coulson had put on for work, which means he's probably not missing at some job he doesn't know about. There's also a desk against the wall near the foot of their bed that is crowded with papers that seem half organized, a box of more on the floor next to it. If Clint had to venture a guess, Emily’s room used to be an office for one of them.

It would be nice to actually take a nap and try to forget that any of this is happening, but he can't quite yet. It's intel time.

Starting with the smallest, Clint opens the two side tables next to the bed. Coulson’s has a book, a baby pacifier, and a second book that is full of sudoku puzzles, finished up to page 21. Clint’s has a notebook (tossed onto the bed for later), a first aid kit box (ignored), and a half empty bottle of lube (super ignored). He tries not to feel the way his face is hot.

Shutting their drawers, he moves onto the desk, skimming along the papers on the surface. There isn’t a lot of information to gather, it mostly looks like old mail and papers that belong to Coulson. There are a stack of papers that are being marked with red pen in Coulson’s familiar writing, he can see “Dr. Coulson” in the heading of one paper under the student’s name. Huh. So he’s a professor. There’s also a planner dropped at an angle next to an opened package of baby diapers. He tosses it onto the bed next to the notebook from before and continues to rifle through the remaining drawers of the desk. Messy collections of pens and notebooks that seem to largely belong to Coulson, lesson plans and notes and things of that sort. Nothing new. 

The closet, beyond the surface organization Clint could see from his initial survey of the room, is very clearly the closet of a couple who has been together for a long time. (Clint also could have guessed at that based on the indentation under the wedding band on his finger.) The clothes are separate and organized but the shoes at the floor mingle together in a slight mess that Clint gets the vague impression would irritate Coulson.

Leaning against one of three wooden stands with drawers full of socks and underwear and baby onesies is a bow and quiver. One guess as to who that belongs to. It's almost a relief to see something so familiar. It's not collapsible or souped up like the one he has at home with the selectable arrowheads, but it's sturdy and well made. He wonders when he has the chance to use it in this world.

A quick check of the bathroom doesn't reveal very much. The cabinets are organized with medicines and razors and towels, typical bathroom things. The shower is the same, a shower rack crowded with different shampoos and body washes and, Clint squints somewhat, another thing of lube sitting shamelessly within. Unbelievable.

He flushes the toilet on his way out of the room just in case Natasha heard him rustling around. 

Flopping onto the bed, Clint picks up the planner he'd thrown there before. He'd first assumed it belongs to Coulson as not much of his life had ever followed any sort of plan or schedule before, but it's his own name that's scribbled on the first page.

The calendar is paper clipped open to February and is unexpectedly full of notes. Today only has a note about the dinner he'd seen on his phone earlier, tomorrow has a note scribbled about an archery class in the afternoon. So that's what the bow is for here. He allows himself to laugh at the idea of taking an archery class when he's been pulling off complicated tricks since he was in his single digit ages. Ridiculous. 

He marks the current date with a little red star. There's no way of knowing how long he’ll be here, but it's smart to mark when he first arrived to keep track of the time.

This weekend is marked Emily’s 8 month birthday. He wonders what people do for birthdays before babies turn a year old, if anything at all. 

The rest of the calendar reveals that his archery class repeats three nights a week and on Tuesdays he has a repeating asl class. He reaches up to touch an ear, he hadn't noticed any hearing aids since waking up, but he can't tell if there are implants or something inside. Maybe he has more in common with this Clint than he originally thought. He's positive he's not learning for Emily, she'd reacted normally all morning to different sounds, tiny round head wobbling when she looked at Coulson talking to her.

He drops the book onto the bed and rubs a hand roughly over his face. He’ll look over the notebook when he isn't afraid his head will split in half. 

He's married to Phil Coulson who is not dead. They have a daughter and a decent sized apartment and Coulson is a professor and Natasha is pregnant but still his best friend, which at least provides one comfort.

Phil had kissed him this morning. It was short and had no heat behind it, the simple parting kiss of a couple who have had an eternity together full of kisses. That had never happened before. Before, Coulson had only ever been an almost maybe _one day_. Clint had never had what it took to move it beyond that. Casual flirting was easy, opening up and trying out something that might mean _more_ was terrifying and awful. Clint had spent a lot of time convincing himself it would happen after this mission, then, no, after this one, and when that didn't work out, after this one. He was a coward, then he'd been Loki’s and Coulson was dead. No more chances.

He swipes a thumb across his bottom lip, he can still feel the kiss if he thinks about it. Part of him hopes Coulson doesn't try to kiss him again when he gets home. Part of him knows he will. 

Clint lays back on the soft bed with his head on the soft pillow and thinks everything through. It's already creeping into late afternoon, the light in the room starting to fade comfortably. He doesn't know when Coulson will come home again, but it's probably not far off. The thought makes him feel a little sick.

The last place within the bedroom Clint can gather new information from is his cellphone. He unlocks it again and settles into the bed a bit more comfortably. He avoids the photos for the time being, not sure he can handle what's inside there right away. Moving on to memos, calendars, social media, anything to occupy his mind more.

He's working on a particularly complicated level of angry birds when he hears conversation from the living room. He can't make out anything being said clearly, but the front door opens and closes again and soft footsteps approach the room. Clint shoves his phone under his pillow and watches the door from where he's still lying across the bed.

Coulson enters the room without a second of hesitation, Emily held tight against him looking as fat and happy as she had that morning. Nat had changed her clothes. His eyebrows are pressed together, but relax when he sees that Clint is still awake in the bed.

“Nat said you felt sick?” He asks. He's still dressed for work for the most part. Jacket off and top buttons of his shirt undone, still looking more put together than Clint could ever try to be.

“Yeah.” Clint keeps it simple.

“Contagious?” Coulson asks next.

Clint shakes his head. “Just-” he stops himself from saying anything. He had a lie all lined up for this, but actually looking Coulson in the face, he's unable to let himself use it. Honesty strikes him as the best option here, for some reason.

“Stress, I think.” He finishes. “I feel tight?”

Coulson nods at him, his shoulders relax, it’s visible that he could tell it was an honest answer.

“Do you mind if I set Emily on the bed with you for a minute?”

Clint nods and has a baby next to him in bed in the next second. They both watch Coulson walk away toward their shared closet, Emily turning her head around so far she starts to lose her balance. Clint wraps a hand around her middle before she can topple over on the bed.

When Coulson starts to undress, Clint focuses all of his attention on Emily. He pokes her belly with one finger, surprised how soft she is. She flaps both of her arms in response and grabs one of his fingers with her entire hand. Something strange and warm happens in Clint’s chest. She shoves his finger into her mouth and gums at it, drooling happily on his hand.

Looking back up at Coulson almost absently, Clint is surprised to see that he's done dressing already. Just standing there in his soft looking t-shirt and not quite pajama pants watching Clint and Emily with a content look on his face.

He climbs onto the bed with them, getting comfortable behind Emily who continues to drool on Clint’s finger.

“We’re still pretty new to this,” Coulson starts in a quiet voice. Not whispering, but calm. “Being dads. But we’re doing okay. You're being a good dad.”

Clint has no idea if that's true or if Coulson is trying to be reassuring. His Coulson had never lied to make him feel better.

“Nat was right.” Clint sighs and tries to look sorry. “I'm kind of scared of her.”

Coulson laughs shortly.

“You know, I think that's normal,” he says.

Emily finally loses interest in Clint’s hand and crawl/slides her way toward Coulson again. He lifts her so she stands on two unsteady legs, making her shriek and bounce happily.

“I have tomorrow free,” Coulson starts after a moment. “And I cancelled dinner with Natasha tonight, she understood.”

Clint feels a worm of guilt curl in his stomach.

“Don't apologize,” Coulson interrupts him before he can even open his mouth. “We’ll have dinner here.”

He drops Emily gently back onto her bum and shifts where he's sitting. Clint has a moment of fear that Coulson wants to kiss him again, but he just leans and presses his lips to Clint’s forehead. Almost a kiss, but easier to accept.

Coulson grunts as he wobbles to the side of the bed, pulling Emily back up against his chest once he's standing.

“Come on, I'll make dinner.” Coulson holds out a hand to lift Clint from the bed easily. He's stronger than he looks, Clint thinks with a little dread. 

“The semester is almost over, spring break is even sooner,” Coulson starts again when Clint is following him back into the tiny kitchen. “It'll be easier when we’re both here with her all the time.”

“Oh.” Is all Clint can say at first. He clears his throat after a moment. “Yeah, that will be a lot easier. For both of us.”

It seems to satisfy, as far as answers go. Coulson is pleased by it and the subject is dropped.

They eat dinner mostly in silence, Clint hesitant to say anything to give away that he's clueless about the life they have together here. He asks a few questions about Coulson’s day to have something to talk about and compliments his cooking, almost letting slip that he had never guessed that Phil Coulson would be a good cook.

After, when Phil is feeding Emily a mix of different mushy foods while Clint washes their dishes, he can't stop himself before a laugh escapes him. Phil glances at him, trying to look irritated. Clint knows what Coulson looks like when he's genuinely irritated and that face is not it.

“What's funny,” Phil presses his lips together and scoops some food off of Emily’s face that didn't quite make it inside. 

“What the hell is with the face?” Clint asks and laughs again. He mimics how he'd been feeding Emily, his mouth open wider than hers as he put the spoon in. 

Phil tries to look offended. The effect is ruined somewhat by the smile breaking free.

“I'm helping!” He says.

“Mhm.” Clint nods. “It doesn't seem to be working much,” he says, eyeing the different colored foods spreading over the baby’s cheeks and chin.

“Oh, shut up,” Phil says, but he's laughing.

The evening goes pleasantly after that. Clint finds himself relaxing in his new environment more than he expected he'd be able too. He'd always wondered what it would be like to see Coulson when he wasn't Agent Coulson, when he was just at home. Just Phil. He knows this isn't quite the same thing, but he bets it's pretty close.

They sit on the couch with Emily and play a movie they pay no attention to. Phil shows Clint something he read online about strengthening baby legs enough to get them ready for walking and Clint just listens quietly. He knew, of course, that he missed Coulson in his life. What he hadn't realized was that he missed just hearing him talk like this. Not that they'd ever discussed muscle development in baby legs, but talking about something he cared about and found interesting. 

He must doze off where he's sitting, because the next thing he knows, Phil is reaching over Emily and gripping his arm to wake him.

“Was I that boring?” Phil asks, but he's laughing again.

Clint shakes his head and fights a yawn. “No, sorry. Just relaxed, I guess.”

“Do you want to go to bed?” Phil asks. His hand wanders from Clint’s arm and up, rubbing a thumb over the shell of his ear, his voice is gentle and calm. 

It hits Clint then how tired he actually is despite the fairly low-action day. He could disappear and go to bed and avoid this strange world even more, but he knows he shouldn't.

“I can- I can help you get Emily to bed first?” He asks. He has no idea what a baby bedtime routine entails. By the sounds of things, Emily is a fairly recent addition to their family. Thankfully, that makes his need to learn how to do fairly simple things easier to understand. 

The suggestion makes Coulson smile at him. As much as Clint may not love the idea of caring for a baby right now, he kind of feels like he would do anything to keep Coulson smiling at him like that.

Together they change Emily into a soft nightdress and a fresh diaper. Coulson mixes a small warm bottle that he tests on his wrist, Clint takes note of the action. Clint feeds and burps her over his shoulder. She looks as lazy and sleepy as Clint feels, her eyelids fighting to stay open.

He moves to hand her over to Coulson, who seems to be better equipped to deal with all baby things, but he holds a hand up as a clear ‘no’.

“She likes sleeping on you better, let her.”

Coulson helps him rearrange her so she’s laying on his chest, ear to his heart.

“I didn’t think she likes me,” he whispers. Emily doesn’t stir.

“Of course she likes you, Clint.” Coulson pushes closer to his side on the couch. One hand comes to slide up and down Emily’s back, soothing.

“She cries when I hold her.” Clint doesn’t know why he’s saying this. He doesn’t know why he can’t stop being so honest in the face of Phil Coulson. He supposes he never really was able to lie to the man.

“When you hold her like a football,” Coulson says, smiling. Clint thinks back to when he first picked her up this morning, holding her out in front of him at arm’s length. He’ll have to try something different next time.

Phil helps him set her in her crib with the smallest blanket he’s ever seen covering up to her arms. A small night light projects stars over the wall and ceiling.

Their own process of getting ready to sleep is more familiar to Clint. Easier. He has a moment of disbelief in the bathroom, brushing their teeth next to each other. This is what Phil Coulson looks like brushing his teeth. Clint had never seen him doing such a human thing in all the years he’d known him before. He and Nat used to joke that he didn’t even need to pee or that he showered in his suit. He tries not to watch too closely and seem weird, but he catches Phil watching him in the mirror a few times too.

Coulson climbs into his own side of the bed and curls onto his side instantly, leaving his lamp off and books in his drawer. Clint sets the planner and notebook he never looked through on his own bedside table and settles under the blankets.

Phil leans across from his part of the bed, apparently not the cuddling type, to kiss Clint once on the cheek. He mumbles a soft ‘good night’ and kisses him again on the lips. Clint manages to control his shock enough this time to return it.

He falls asleep trying to convince himself he isn’t taking something that isn’t rightfully his.

\-----

Clint wakes up and outside of his window is New York. He’s alone in his bed in his empty Stark apartment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am again! I'm aiming to post every other week, but some things have come up that the next one may be a bit delayed with posting. It's written, not edited :)
> 
> Thanks to those of you who kudos-ed and commented, I really wasn't expecting it.
> 
> Here we go!

“So it was a dream,” Natasha says, sitting across from Clint, eating her breakfast.

“I guess?” Clint still can’t believe he’s here after spending a whole day convinced he had some new life. “It couldn’t have been, though. I could read everything, normally I can’t in dreams. Time passed normally, too. The clocks all worked the same.”

“Coulson was there? You’re positive it was him?” She looks sceptical.

“I remember what Coulson looked like, Nat. It was him.”

“It’s been a year and a half,” Natasha says with a little shrug. She doesn't look up at him. “Sometimes we dream of people we miss. Sometimes it feels real.”

Clint thinks maybe she's right.

He has himself just about convinced by the time he's crawling back into bed that night. Sometimes you just dream about people you miss.

\-----

Clint wakes up in bed alone, but once again it's not his bed in New York. He can still feel the warmth where Coulson was in bed next to him.

He sits up and sighs out a quiet curse just for the comfort it brings to him.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” Coulson’s voice comes from the doorway of the room. Clint stops rubbing his eyes to peek out at him. He's standing there looking slightly ruffled from sleep, Emily balanced in one arm and the other patting his short hair down. He’s wearing thick framed glasses.

Clint wants to swear again.

“Morning,” he says instead.

“Breakfast?”

Clint grunts as he rolls out of bed and stands, stretching and popping.

Emily has a pacifier in her mouth and looks sleepy still. She reaches one hand out when Clint shuffles toward them both.

“Say good morning, daddy,” Coulson says, bouncing her a little with his arm. 

Her second hand joins the first in reaching out for Clint and he grabs her under her armpits again, the same as last time. This time, though, he knows better and holds her against his chest before he can upset her, mimicking the way he remembers Coulson doing the day before. She looks up at him, reaching up and grabbing his cheek in her tiny hand before trying to shove her fingers into his mouth.

“I think that means ‘good morning, daddy’.” Coulson laughs.

Clint feeds Emily again and Coulson makes waffles for them both. Clint tries to keep in mind that he’s dreaming. He’s dreaming of Coulson because he misses him and he’s dead. It’s hard to keep in mind when the smell of the waffles and coffee fills the entire kitchen, warm and real. 

They take turns playing with the baby and cleaning things up around the house. Clint doesn’t really know where anything belongs, but he tries to organize things in the baby’s room. There is still some evidence that it used to be an office, so he moves those things into the bedroom near the desk. He wonders if he used to have a job that he quit to be a stay at home dad. The idea doesn't sound like something he would do, but he knows he wouldn't make Coulson quit his job as a professor to do it either.

He’s not at it very long before Coulson is joining him in Emily’s room, the tiny girl in his arms fast asleep. He puts her back into her crib carefully and without saying anything gestures for Clint to follow him out. 

“You know how easily she wakes up.” Clint doesn’t. “You should shower before class.”

Oh yeah, Class. Clint has an archery class in the afternoon to be ready for. He still thinks the idea is absurd to entertain, but he doesn’t want to set off any more alarms in Coulson than he already has. So he agrees and heads away to take a quick shower. 

Sitting in the bathroom in just a towel, it strikes Clint that he has no clue how to even get to his class or where it is. He grabs his phone with a silent prayer playing through his mind --otherwise he’ll either have to miss it or ask Phil where it is and neither of those will end well-- unlocking it and checking his maps locations. He finds a rec center address saved and finds that, apparently, they’re living in Wisconsin. 

“Who the hell lives in Wisconsin,” Clint mumbles to himself. 

He stands with a heavy sigh, gets dressed with a heavy sigh, grabs his archery gear and leaves the apartment and sighs as he follows his phone gps all the way to the rec center in town for his class. Wisconsin is really fucking cold, but maybe shooting will actually help him to relax somewhat.

Entering and scanning the rec center, he sees a bunch of young girls practicing what looks like early gymnastics. He can hear a distant thudding of basketballs against the floor, and see a group of kids milling about at a far side of the room. The final group of about 7 or 8 kids are pulling gear out of a storage closet, setting up freestanding targets so they’re lined up neatly in front of a cushioned wall.

“Mr. Barton is here!” one of the kids shouts, waving across the gym at him.

“Oh, shit,” Clint whispers under his breath.

He’s not taking an archery class. He’s teaching an archery class. To a bunch of kids. He waves back awkwardly.

The kids all gather around him when he finally reaches their end of the gym, talking over each other. At a glance, they’re all pretty young; one looks like he’s maybe nine, none of them seem to be high school age.

“Do something cool, Mr. Barton!” one of the girls shouts over the others.

“Something cool?” Clint asks. He lets out a short laugh before he can stop himself.

“A trick, Mr. Barton!”

Clint presses his lips together and looks over the group of kids once, all staring up at him expectantly, some of the younger ones looking like they’re about to vibrate out of their skin.

“Bring a couple mats and stack them here,” he instructs a few of the kids. They jump into action, dragging some mats away from the wall and over to where he pointed them to.

Clint steps back at an angle to the mats, lining up his shot mentally, stretching his legs out and getting a feel for the bow in his hands. With a running start, Clint plants one foot solidly on the mat and pushes himself into a side flip, letting a shot off while upside down and landing with a squeak of his sneakers.

There’s silence for a moment, and then the kids are all losing their minds. Some of them run down the length to the target to check Clint’s aim, only slightly off center (he wasn’t really trying that hard). Others crowd around him, all talking over each other, creating a cacophony of noise in the gymnasium.

“Alright, okay,” Clint tries calming them down. It accomplishes nothing. “Quiet!” His voice is a little sharper, and the kids quiet down into murmurs. “Or I won’t teach you how to do something cool.”

The kids all go silent, some of them clamping their lips shut to make a big show of it. He almost laughs because it actually worked.

“Alright, where did we leave off last time?”

\---

The class goes surprisingly well, as a whole. The kids seem to really respect Clint and no one gets shot, so he takes that as a good thing. It's pretty basic intro stuff with an enthusiastic group. He can kind of see why he would be interested in doing something like this. 

The drive back to the apartment is easy; he feels light after the anxiety about going to a class he knew nothing about has evaporated. At the instructions in a text from Phil, he picks up some ready made dinner from a supermarket, grabbing a bottle of cheap wine just because. If his dreams are going to taunt him he’s going to need alcohol.

After dinner and clean up and bath time for Emily that features more splashing than Clint had anticipated, they're relaxing again in a similar way to the night before. Phil has Emily sitting on his lap, already looking like she's getting sleepy again. Clint never knew that babies spend so much of their days unconscious. She resists when Phil tries to lay her down against him and gets outright angry when he tries to lay her on the couch between them.

She rolls herself over with some struggle, wiggling on her belly for a moment before pushing herself up onto her arms. Clint looks at Phil for some kind of guidance at what to do. She looks like she needs help, but--

“Wait,” Phil whispers like he might distract her.

Clint doesn't move and watches Emily wobble on her arms a moment longer before kicking her legs to move herself. It's not crawling, but she's moving herself and she sounds excited about it. As soon as she's close enough, she wraps both fists around handfuls of Clint’s shirt and pulls.

He tries to arrange himself to lift her up, but the angle is awkward and Phil has to help him. He lifts her and plops her onto Clint’s lap easily, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with his smile.

“She's getting so big,” Phil says, the very picture of a proud father.

Emily seems to be exactly where she wanted and she finally settles against Clint’s chest with a wide yawn. Clint acts distracted by getting her comfortable to hide that he doesn't know how to respond.

“Crawling.” Phil sighs happily. “Soon she'll be walking, talking, running.”

“Think you can keep up?” Clint jokes. He imagines Phil chasing back and forth after a rowdy toddler. A part of him reminds himself that won't be happening because Phil is _dead_. 

Phil laughs though, pinching Clint’s arm lightly enough that he doesn't jump and jostle an already dozing Emily. 

Once she's in her crib, Phil and Clint lounge on the couch together again, this time with a bottle of wine between them. Clint wonders to himself as he downs his first glass if this is their usual nightly situation. What kind of things they did before Emily was around? It's not boring, oddly enough. It's comfortable, just on the right side of lazy. Knowing Coulson is a college professor, it's no surprise he would want to take his nights to relax.

And it's exactly what he's doing now. Coulson has flopped onto his side, head resting on a pillow and hand flipping through the channel guide with the remote. He settles on some movie Clint has never seen that features Tom Hardy looking serious and angry. He has his own glass of wine on the table in front of him, mostly untouched. He’d smiled when Clint brought the bottle home, nodding like he approved.

Slowly, as the movie progresses, Phil stretches to take up more and more of the couch, until his feet are in Clint’s lap and his toes are squeezing in between his thighs.

“Warm,” Phil answers without Clint needing to ask.

They watch the rest of the movie that way, Clint getting sleepier and sleepier. One of his hands has found its way to rest around Phil’s bony ankle without his brain’s approval. His thumb is brushing over the bare skin just at the end of his pajama pant leg, not really thinking as he traces the bumpy bones and tendons, coming to rest at his heel. The rest of his fingers are barely able to feel where the hairs start on his leg, brushing over the skin so lightly he knows it must tickle.

Phil barely reacts to any of the touching. Clint knows because he spends most of the movie paying more attention to the side of his face than the television.

If this is just a dream like Natasha had told him it must be, and how could it ever be anything else, he wants to take his time to soak in what he’d never gotten the chance to have in his real life. Seeing Coulson as he is at home; all the stress lines erased from his face, soft t-shirts and loose fitting aged sweatpants, easy little smiles. Comfortable in a way he never would've guessed Coulson could be.

He only realizes he's been staring for too long when Phil looks up at him. He tries not to jerk his frozen hand away from Phil’s ankle like it's been set on fire, reaching to grab his glass and take several long drinks of his wine to avoid looking at that knowing face. That one actually _is_ an expression he's used to. Was used to. 

Phil wiggles his bare toes between Clint’s thighs to grab his attention back from the bottom of his glass.

He fights it for a brief moment before giving in and looking up and over at Phil again. He’s still watching Clint with a little smile on his face -more in his eyes than on his lips- and he wiggles his toes again. Clint does not think about how high those feet are pressed between his legs. They're married, this isn't weird for Phil, he can stick his feet anywhere he wants. 

“You're not watching the movie,” Phil says.

Clint swallows. He shakes his head, both to clear anymore thoughts of Phil’s feet and to admit that no, he no longer knows what is happening in their movie.

Phil surprises him by smiling. It's not a teasing little half smile like he's had before, not that proud dad smile he seems to have for Emily, but something real. Something just for Clint that creates little wrinkles near his eyes and pulls his hidden smile lines despite still being fairly small.

“Come here.” Phil reaches out one handed for him, wiggling his body until he's perilously close to falling off the edge.

His fingers finally snag onto Clint's short sleeve, twisting in the fabric and tugging gently. Phil’s hand wraps around Clint’s bicep when he leans into the pull on his shirt, tugging with a little more meaning and making Clint catch himself with one hand in the space Phil had made behind himself on the couch.

“Lie down,” Phil says. His words are slightly strained from the twist his body is in to look at Clint who is now more behind him than beside. His hand slides easily from Clint’s arm and up, finding rest at the back of his neck. Blunt fingertips press into the short hair at the base of his neck and Clint wants to blame the wine for the blush that he feels follow them.

Then Phil is turning away again, head resting on his sofa pillow and shifting to get comfortable where he still rests too near the edge.

Clint hesitates for another moment, until Phil turns to shoot him an (also too familiar) impatient look. He drops all at once onto his side in the gap behind Phil, wiggling a bit around his arm trapped beneath him to get comfortable. His other hand hovers briefly before he drops it onto his own thigh, unsure what else to do with it.

Deciding for him, Phil shifts back into Clint’s space so he's flush against him, back to chest and legs tangled together. He reaches blindly and pulls Clint’s loose hand around himself so that Clint is fully wrapped around him.

Despite himself, Clint relaxes. He pulls his arm just a bit more tightly around Phil and breathes him in. He can feel the strong heartbeat against his hand and he wonders if that happens in dreams. Has he ever had a dream so detailed he could smell the people in it? He can smell Phil like this, with his nose pressed up against the edge of his t-shirt (Clint actually suspects that it belongs to him based on the slightly too loose fit, but he isn't complaining). It’s hard to put words to that smell, but it's familiar. Comfortable. He noses along the back of Phil’s neck, eyes closed, trying to commit the smell to memory, feeling a strange little thrill when Phil shivers at the tickle-light touch of his nose and barely there scruff. 

\-----

Clint wakes up in New York half wrapped around one of his pillows. He can only smell the fabric softener that still lingers in his bedsheets.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dreams continue. Clint freaks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my dearies! I have not given up on this story by any means! Things were a bit up in the air but I'm settling back on my feet and into a schedule. Every other week, if things go my way. :)
> 
> Possibly important to note:  
> Allusions to Clint's shitty dad, a panic attack, stressful baby stuff.

An entire week flies past in the same exact way. Go to sleep in New York alone, wake up in Wisconsin with Phil and a baby, go to sleep in Wisconsin, wake up in New York.

Clint can no longer convince himself this is really a dream, not even a very, very lucid dream. It’s too consistent and real, there’s too much _life_ to Phil. Time passes the same in each life, his schedule is the same each time, faces and names are the same. It’s like he’s really living in two different realities every day. At the same time, he hasn’t mentioned it to Natasha or anyone else again. He’s not quite ready for the pitying looks that would surely bring him. Clint Barton, finally and completely losing his mind.

He decides that he’ll just have to deal with it. Somehow. 

But it’s difficult, and he’s stressed out.

In Wisconsin, they celebrate Emily’s eight month birthday with just the three of them. Nat stops by with some small gifts but doesn’t stick around for long. Phil brings out a big plastic round bounce seat that surrounds the baby in rattling and textured toys that she can’t actually seem to get enough of. It’s a little bit cute, maybe, if Clint had to admit it, like maybe if there was a gun to his head. He’s still not used to having a baby around, though he can appreciate the image of Phil _with_ the baby and the glasses and the soft sweaters and softer smiles. 

He has more of his archery classes that go surprisingly well, and he isn’t exactly surprised to discover that he’s not a student in the (thankfully adult) sign language class he’d seen in his planner but that he teaches that one also.

His schedule and Phil’s seem to have been coordinated around each other so one of them is always home with Emily. Clint eagerly passes her off to Phil as soon as he gets home from his classes or meetings or whatever he’s doing. He’s pretty aware that it probably makes him look bad to Phil, but he kind of can’t stop himself either. She makes him anxious. She screams and half the time he can’t figure out what she needs. Phil tells him frequently that he’s doing just fine, but he still feels like he’s going to mess up somehow. And it’s not like she’s some burnt dinner he can toss out and order pizza instead, but a little dependent human life that needs him to be better than he's been. Maybe better than he _can_ be. 

Things aren’t even all that much easier in New York, either. The Avengers are still caught up in whatever drama of the week Fury needs them to help him out with, and that man keeps getting more and more secretive so that even Clint has become more or less left clueless on the inner workings of SHIELD these days.

He knows that some of them have noticed he's been acting oddly, especially Natasha, but no one has mentioned anything to him about it yet. (He knows she wants to, though. He's been very careful to only run into her when they won't be alone together.)

There are several nights where he tries to fight his sleep completely. He figures that if he doesn’t sleep, he won’t dream, and if he doesn’t dream, he won’t wake up in Wisconsin again.

It doesn’t work. Maybe he’s not as young as he used to be or maybe he’s just not as on edge anymore. Maybe it’s that it feels like every other weird Fury mission is kicking his ass six ways to Sunday. He’s too tired; he never makes it very late before his eyes are sliding shut and he’s waking up with Phil. 

It's incredibly frustrating in both of his lives and that finally comes to a head during the first week of March in Wisconsin.

After waking up in the morning with Phil once again, Clint is already in a bad mood. (It's Sunday and his eleventh morning in Wisconsin in a row. He's been keeping track.) Emily has spent most of the morning screaming and crying. Phil says that she's probably teething, but no amount of chilled gummy teething rings from Nat or baby medicine seems to help at all. She's been passed back and forth between them all morning, and every time Clint is faced with the squirming wailing baby in his arms, he can almost physically feel his anxiety levels raising.

She blessedly passes out shortly after breakfast, seemingly more from exhaustion after crying for so long than actually feeling any better, but Clint will take the silence it brings either way.

Phil maintains a calm front, but Clint can see the worry beneath it. He keeps pressing his wrist and lips to her tiny forehead to feel for a fever, and Clint can feel himself tense every time he approaches her, afraid he will wake her up and the screaming will begin again. 

“We’ll have to call her pediatrician tomorrow for a different medicine recommendation,” Phil says after the fifth time checking her temperature.

Clint doesn't know what finally pushes him over the edge: if it's the stressful pacing of Phil all throughout the apartment, the thought that Emily will wake back up and start screaming again, or maybe just the perfect fucking fatherly care and concern that Phil has had this entire week at every turn that nothing could have ever prepared Clint for. It's not as though he's really ever had anything like that in his life before, and seeing it like this, sometimes he just wants to scream.

Three more times, Phil checks Emily’s temperature and makes sure she's sleeping soundly on her blanket, wandering between her small room and the kitchen between each check.

Rising from his seat, Clint makes a beeline for the master bedroom and quickly changes out of his worn bedclothes. Into jeans and a shirt, pulling a warm jacket over it and whatever hat he can grab to hide his untouched bed hair because it’s fucking Wisconsin and apparently winter lasts forever.

“Clint?” Phil asks from Emily’s doorway as Clint walks past, unseeing and unresponsive.

He grabs the car keys from where he knows they’re always stored in the little bowl near the door. A quick look around doesn’t reveal where he last dropped his cell phone, but the thought of digging around for it makes his chest feel even tighter than it’s already felt all morning. If he stays any longer, he won’t be able to breathe.

Phil stops him near the front door, hand already reaching for the handle.

“Where are you going?”

Clint can’t bring himself to look at the concerned expression on his face, afraid of what else he might see there if he did look. He stares past him instead, into the apartment.

“I can’t do this, right now,” he says. “I just…” His breath catches and those alarm bells ringing in his head telling him to run away finally win out. The door is wrenched open and he slides out quickly, into their sensible kid-friendly car and away from their building within minutes. 

\--

It feels like a long time before Clint can breathe properly again. He forces his hands to relax their too tight hold on the steering wheel once he can. A quick glance at the dash clock shows that he’s been gone and driving aimlessly for nearly an hour. He doesn’t seem to be very far from the apartment, but he’s definitely not ready to go back there yet. He’s calm enough now to know he’s not exactly being sensible, but not enough to be willing to face Phil again just yet.

A dusty looking road sign informs him that there’s a park nearby, and he drives through until he comes to a wide section of river where he parks. The park is pretty spread out and open, and Clint can easily imagine it swarming with families and children in the summer, playing games and throwing rocks into the river. The way he spent his summers as a kid with his brother. Now, though, it’s mostly deserted. An older man and woman walk through the snow, bundled up but still looking cold. They stop occasionally to snap pictures of the white frosted trees or massive chunks of ice setting on top of the river. Clint can hear one of them laughing all the way inside his still running car.

He shuts the car off and leans back in his seat. The quiet of Emily sleeping had been nice, but it hadn’t been peace. That quiet was just waiting. The quiet of the car and this park is peaceful. Clint presses his back more firmly against his seat and shuts his eyes, listening to the rushing water in front of him for a long while, thinking of nothing.

Phil is probably going to be angry. That’s the first thought that finally breaks back into his mind. He groans and drops forward so his forehead thunks off the solid steering wheel. It hurts. He deserves it. 

It’s hard to believe how terrible he is at this. It’s hard to understand what the hell _this_ even is. It’s been eleven days since he suddenly started dreaming of Phil Coulson and this insane life, and nothing has started to make any more sense than it did that first time. It’s no surprise, to him, that he’s terrible at most parts of this life. Of course he would be a terrible husband, he’s never even been that great of a boyfriend to anyone before. And of course he would be a terrible father, he’s never even known what it takes to be a good one. 

The spiraling self-pitying thoughts are interrupted by a light tapping against his window. He peeks an eye open and sees the older couple from before both standing outside his door, looking concerned.

He rolls the window down a crack. His muscles all tighten at once at the wave of frigid air that rushes in.

“Are you alright, son?” the man asks. His nose and cheeks are red from cold.

Clint puts on the most reassuring face he can muster up and nods.

“In trouble with the wife?” the woman asks, gesturing to the back seat of the car. Clint twists around to see where she’s pointing, Emily’s car seat in the back, empty but surrounded by soft toys.

“Something like that,” Clint finally tells them. 

The man laughs. “Oh yeah, I know that look.” The woman bats his arm with the back of her hand, but she’s smiling too. “Buy her some flowers. Big ones! It always works for me.”

The woman scoffs and rolls her eyes. “A sincere apology, dear.” She points at Clint. “Works better than any old flowers.”

Clint nods again at them, unable to resist a small smile. He mutters a quiet thanks to them after they tell him to head home and out of the cold, turning back to their own car and driving away. He sits alone in the park for a few minutes longer, but the sun is starting to get low and the cold feels like it’s seeping straight into his bones.

Driving home doesn’t take very long, even with the detour he takes to the supermarket where he buys dinner again. (He takes a moment to look over the flower arrangements that are for sale, but decides not to buy any of them. Phil doesn’t seem like the flower type.) He only sits in the parked car for a few more minutes before he decides that he can’t avoid the inevitable any longer; better to get up and face Phil sooner rather than later.

The front door is unlocked when he reaches it, and he can hear Phil’s voice murmuring from inside, indistinct noise at first but forming words as he gets closer.

“-didn't take his phone, didn't tell me anything,” Phil is saying.

When Clint turns into the open living room, he finally sees that Phil is talking to Natasha, who has Emily on her lap drinking from a bottle. Phil looks sick, Natasha looks pissed, especially when she looks up and sees that Clint has returned.

“Uh,” Clint splits the silence intelligently. “I brought dinner.”

Phil stands from the couch with an expression Clint has never seen on his face before. Anger, confusion, worry, and, with a gurgling ball of guilt settling into his stomach, Clint can see the hurt in his eyes and posture.

“Clint, what the hell?” Phil asks. Natasha stands silently and disappears with Emily into her bedroom.

“What do you mean, what the hell?” Clint moves to drop his grocery bags onto the kitchen table.

Phil is still standing in the center of the living room, posture unchanged.

“I mean,” Phil starts, finally following his path so he can face Clint in the kitchen. “What the hell is going on with you? Where did you go? I- we were so worried, you didn't even take your phone!”

Oh yeah, he hadn't taken his phone. That singular overwhelming need to run away and vanish from this morning seems so distant now. 

“I didn't mean to make you worry, I just needed some space.” Clint sits on a kitchen chair and struggles to look up at Phil’s face. “I needed to clear my head, is all, I wasn't gone that long.”

“You were gone for five hours, Clint.” Phil’s voice is level and quiet, but Clint can tell that it’s more so that Emily and Natasha won't hear him than anything else. Clint has seen Phil yell before at trainees, agents making bad calls, even at him and Natasha once or twice, but this contained anger is much, much worse. “No phone, no contact. I didn't know if you'd been hurt. I didn't know if you were even-”

Typically Clint’s method of facing anger is quietly taking his lecture and grovelling after, but this moment actually grabs his attention. Phil making himself stop, biting his tongue, looking guilty despite him having every right to be angry.

“If I was what?” Clint dares to ask quietly.

“If you were even coming home,” Phil finishes his thought. The words wrap hot around Clint’s throat, choking any response he might've had lined up right out of him. Because, fuck. 

“You just said ‘I can't do this’ and left.” Phil’s voice is softer now. “I almost reported you missing, but Natasha told me to wait a bit longer.”

Phil thought Clint had abandoned them. 

Phil thought Clint had had enough and was running away from them.

He was kind of right.

“I'm not- I wouldn't-” Clint struggles to get a solid enough grip on his thoughts to put them into words.

“No, Clint, I know. You wouldn't do that.” Phil takes one step closer. “You just scared me today.”

Clint stands from his seat, breath coming too heavy and shaky. “I'm not like him,” he finally manages to say. He's horrified to find his eyes burning, even though no tears actually fall. 

Grabbing a handful of Clint's jacket, Phil pulls him off balance and catches him in a tight hug. Clint gratefully buries his head into Phil’s shoulder, taking in the safe feeling of those arms holding him close.

“I'm not like him,” Clint repeats. There aren't any other words he can think, at this point. He needs to convince himself as much as Phil that it's true. 

One of Phil's hands comes to the back of Clint’s head, pulling away the hat he still has on and smoothing down his hair. He peppers a few light kisses at his temple.

“You're not like him, Clint,” Phil says in a voice that leaves no room for question. “You came back.”

The sigh that Clint heaves out leaves him slumped against Phil’s front, but he seems to have no problem keeping them both balanced.

“I'm sorry,” Clint mumbles into the fabric of the sweater Phil is wearing today. 

“You've been distant, lately,” Phil says quietly. “Is everything okay?”

Clint buries his nose further into Phil. He smells the same as he does every time he's here. He shrugs.

“Is it- is it us?” Phil asks. “Emily or me, or…”

Clint shakes his head quickly. They might be the strange part in this whole thing for him, but the fact that he finds them strange and has struggled to get used to them, that rests on his shoulders. They’re not his family, but he still feels like a jackass for running off and scaring Phil. Especially as someone who knows very well what it’s like to be run off from.

“It's just me,” Clint says. 

It's very unexpected when Phil actually laughs above him, shoulders shaking slightly.

“We can deal with just you.”

The hand in Clint’s hair curls, fingers tugging through short messy hair. Clint’s hands grab more tightly at Phil’s sweater, not ready to pull himself away from this hug just yet.

“I love you,” Phil says after a long time of silent hugging in the kitchen. 

Clint doesn't respond for a drawn out moment. Probably too long, although Phil doesn't seem to mind waiting. He debates with himself about what would be right to say, what he should be allowed to say, before he decides to simply say what he _wants_ to say. 

“Love you.” Quickly followed by, “I'm sorry.”

\--

“Is it my turn?” Natasha asks when Phil cracks open the door to Emily’s room finally, Clint hovering a bit behind him.

“That won't be necessary,” Phil replies gently.

Clint shuffles into the room behind him. Nat sits on the soft rocking chair next to Emily’s crib. Emily sits inside the crib itself, surrounded by toys. She is currently crashing two plastic toys together, smiling at the sound it makes.

“Even though I really deserve it,” Clint makes sure to add.

“You do, but fine.” She stands up with a little effort and squeezes past both of them easily. “I'll reheat dinner, I hope you bought enough for three.”

Dinner is comfortable, surprisingly. Emily spends more time making a mess of the food on her high chair table than eating it, but she’s not as fussy as she was earlier in the day. Natasha suggests that she may be teething and coming down with an ear infection at the same time, and that a doctor’s appointment should be made very soon. At this point, Clint would hardly question the advice of some random person on the street, so he’ll listen to whatever Natasha tells him.

Phil’s foot is wrapped around Clint’s ankle the entire time they eat.

\--

Clint follows Phil to bed that night after taking care of putting Emily to sleep, sliding under the warm covers next to where Phil is still sitting up, reading one of his books with those thick framed glasses on. He catches Clint watching him again and smiles. One hand drops onto the bed next to Clint’s, and the other holds his book against his knees so he can continue to read.

Grabbing Phil’s hand in both of his, Clint makes no move to disturb his reading or their silence, but holds onto his fingers. He takes his time memorizing the lines across his palm and where the veins run under the thin skin on top, tracing them all at least once. 

After several turned pages and wide yawns, Phil drops the book open on his chest to rub at both eyes one handed. Clint presses his thumb along his palm.

“Phil?” Clint’s voice is quiet, but Phil hears him, humming as acknowledgement. 

He leans away from Clint just enough to drop his book back onto his bedside table and set his glasses on top of that.

“I’m s-”

Phil sighs loudly, making Clint abruptly stop speaking.

“If this is going to be another apology, I will have to shut you up,” he says.

When Clint looks up from Phil’s hand to his face, he can see the smile twitching at the corners of his lips.

Clint tries his very hardest to maintain a straight face even as he opens his mouth again to finish. “I am sorry, though. Really.”

Phil pushes Clint so he's flat on his back much more quickly than Clint expected he ever could. He looks serious, but there's laughter shining in his eyes.

What Clint doesn't expect is the pillow that follows, smacking into his face with a soft _thwump_.

“Be quiet,” Phil demands, voice muffled by the pillow currently suffocating Clint. 

When Clint pushes the pillow away with one hand, Phil is smiling. When he makes a face and spits out the fuzzy taste of pillowcase, Phil actually laughs at him.

“You had a panic attack,” Phil says, pressing a short kiss to Clint’s cheek. “It happens.”

“I'll be better,” Clint swears. It's a promise to Phil and a reminder to himself. Do better. Play this role. In some weird way, it means he has Phil back alive, and he’ll do whatever he needs to maintain that.

“You're already better,” Phil replies very simply.

The doubt Clint feels at that must show on his face, because Phil definitely feels the need to say more.

“When I first brought up adopting a baby, you I thought I might have broken you,” he says. “You looked like I’d suggested you dive into a pit of rattlesnakes.”

He pauses to kiss Clint again, pulling away before Clint can kiss back.

“Most days you do the entire routine on your own. You got her into bed tonight on your own. You're allowed to have hiccups.”

“Kiss me again,” Clint demands.

Phil does. This time, he lingers. 

Clint has spent eleven days trying to get used to kissing Coulson. Or really he spent about three days thinking about how strange it was to kiss Coulson before he decided to kiss Phil instead. This man is virtually identical in every way to the Agent Coulson that Clint knew for most of his adult life, but he's not him. He's not the agent he always knew. He's just Phil.

And Phil is really really nice to kiss.

Generally, Clint does his best to keep their kisses short. PG movie short. A few nights out of the week, he’d had to break away from some with a bit more heat to them. Not for lack of wanting. Definitely _definitely_ not for lack of wanting. More for lack of…. Not really having the right, in his mind. This Phil isn't married to avenger Clint, he's married to like, weird normal guy Clint. It feels wrong to do too much. 

It seems, though, that every time something like this happens, that line gets a little more blurred.

But Phil pulls away first this time, thankfully. Propped up on one elbow above Clint, but not making any move to leave his space.

“No more apologizing, okay?” One hand pats Clint’s chest. They kiss once more before Phil really does pull away. “Go to sleep, stop worrying.”

They both settle down properly into their own sides of the bed as they have every other night Clint has been here. Tonight, though, Clint can’t make himself relax enough to find his sleep. He shifts and rolls for a while, trying his hardest to not disturb Phil whose breathing is already deep and even. 

“Clint,” Phil says suddenly, surprising him into holding still. 

Phil stretches his arm out as he shifts closer, pulling on Clint to meet him in the middle of the bed. Clint rolls so he’s very nearly pressed flush against Phil’s side.

“Go to sleep,” Phil repeats his own words from before.

Clint carefully wraps an arm around Phil’s middle to pull himself even closer against him, buries his face against his shoulder, and is asleep before he knows it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint tries to adapt. Natasha tries to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that there has been a change of rating for sexual ~themes~

In what is apparently his routine now, Clint wakes up in his own bed in New York. 

This morning when he rolls over, however, Natasha is sitting comfortably on the empty half of his bed, staring at him. He very nearly jumps out of his skin mid-yawn, choking on his spit.

“Jesus, Nat,” he says after his heart stops feeling like it’s about to beat out of his chest. “You shouldn’t do that, what if I’d attacked you?”

She shrugs. “You’re slow before coffee, I’d win.”

She’s right.

“What are you doing here creepily sitting in my bed, anyway?” Clint asks. He’s sprawled out on his stomach, t-shirt and pajama pants twisted all around him from sleep. 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says. “I don’t like being avoided.”

“I haven’t-” Clint tries to start, but he’s stopped dead by the look on Natasha’s face. She’s not angry, she’s extremely unimpressed. “Okay, I was avoiding you, I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“About what?” she asks. She shifts, stretching her legs out so they’re draped across his, simultaneously making herself more comfortable and keeping him in place.

Clint sighs into his pillow and rubs one hand across his face roughly. This is not his favorite way to start a morning. 

“Can’t I at least have coffee first?”

Natasha rotates her torso, legs not moving away from his, toward the little bedside table he’d put together a few weeks ago. When she turns back around, it's with a coffee in each of her hands. 

“Fuckin’- of course.” He sighs again and grabs the to go cup from her. “Of course you did.”

She looks very pleased with herself when he takes his first sip. It's perfect, but he’ll never tell her that.

“Fine, fine. Whatever.” He sighs and takes another sip of his coffee, taking it as a moment to gather his thoughts. “Remember that thing I asked you about last week?”

Looking thoughtful for a short moment, she finally answers. “You asked me several things last week, which one?”

“About a dream I had one night.”

“Oh yeah.” She takes a long drink from her own cup. Clint doubts it’s coffee, probably one of those flowery teas that she likes for some reason. “The dream with Coulson in it. What about it?”

“I may have had some more of those,” Clint says. When Natasha gives him a silent questioning look, he continues, “Like, every night since then. I don't think it's just a dream, Nat. It's too consistent to be a normal dream but enough changes that it's not some recurring dream either.” He shifts and rolls so he can sit up a bit on his bed, slouched against the headboard instead of awkwardly trying to drink from his cup while lying down. “It's the same place every day, but time passes and the days change. Things follow predictable schedules and- It really feels like I'm just living two lives.”

“And Coulson is always there?” Natasha asks, leaning forward to bring herself closer. Clint is relieved she is willing to actually listen to him and not laugh in his face and call him crazy. 

“Yeah, we. We live together.” His thumb brushes along the inside of the fingers on his left hand. It's surprising how quickly he got used to the feeling and weight of a wedding band there. “He's the same, too, Nat, it's weird! He has the same voice and habits, he takes his coffee the same, his laugh, smile, the face he makes when he's irritated…”

“So you're still irritating him?” Natasha looks almost impressed. 

Clint snorts and rubs his eyes roughly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We had a fight, actually.”

“Typical.”

Once he thinks about it, she’s definitely right about that. If there’s one thing that was always a constant between him and Coulson, working together at Shield, it was that he always knew how to get under the man’s skin. It had never mattered though, their professional relationship was so strong that no hard feelings had ever lasted very long. Usually not beyond the desserts Clint would always bring to Coulson’s office after dinner.

“So if it’s not a dream, what is it?” Natasha asks. She looks concerned, which Clint expected, but she doesn’t look too skeptical yet. It could either be because their lives are normally so batshit that this actually makes some sense, or she doesn’t want to show her disbelief and have him shut down entirely. Whichever reason it is, the answer is the same.

“Fuck if I know.”

\--

“No, Natasha, stop asking,” Clint says for what feels like the millionth time. 

“Clint, come on.” She trails after him in the hallway of his Stark apartment, unwilling to let him even go shower without pestering him. It’s been three days and she hasn’t let the subject drop. It’s driving him straight up the wall.

“I don’t want to talk to medical, okay? I don’t want to talk to anyone.” He tries to shut her out of the bathroom, but she manages to squeeze in behind him anyway. He sighs heavily. Mostly at himself for ever becoming best friends with a small, flexible, and very nosey spy. 

“Fine,” Natasha says easily, leaning against the bathroom door, watching Clint pick a soft towel from the cupboard full of them. “Don’t talk to medical, but let us run some tests _here_. We need to figure this out.”

“No.” Clint turns in his place at the center of the bathroom. “And would it kill you to give me a little privacy?” He gestures between Natasha and the shower.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before. Plus, if I leave, you’ll vanish and avoid me again.”

Clint stares at Natasha. She stares back. He frowns. She quirks an eyebrow. He puts his hands on the waistband of his pants. She plants her feet firmly in place. He throws his hands up, defeated, and moves to turn the shower on, stripping quickly and stepping under the water.

The shower curtain is pulled aside moments later, just wide enough for Natasha to poke her head in. Clint vaguely wonders what having friends who recognize boundaries must feel like.

“What if it’s just Bruce?” she asks.

Clint turns away and starts to shampoo his hair.

“What if it’s just Bruce and I leave you alone and have lunch ready for when you’re done here?”

Clint scrapes his dull nails into his scalp. “I’ll think about it,” he replies, barely audible over the echoing noise of the shower.

\--

“So, okay, I’m not exactly clear on what the problem here is,” Bruce says from the wheely chair in his spacious office slash lab slash whatever. Clint tends to avoid any floor where science experiments can (and often do) go wrong. “You’re having dreams?”

Natasha is seated in a second wheely chair that, based on the organized chaos of the desktop behind it, Clint suspects typically belongs to Tony. Clint is on a large cold table in the center of the room looking like a kid about to get his flu shot. The only thing missing from making it a real doctor’s appointment is the annoying crinkly paper covering the table.

Still, he’s not happy. It’s not his fault Natasha bribed him with food. He’s a bit more pliable with a stomach full of pizza.

“Weird ones,” Natasha fills in for Clint.

Bruce drops his glasses onto his desk to look between Natasha and Clint. He settles on Natasha.

“Dreams are just random firing synapses of the brain while you sleep. They’re generally pretty much meaningless, even the really weird ones.” He looks at Clint next. “Night terrors or sleepwalking could create a bit more risk, have you-”

“They’re not dreams,” Clint finally speaks up. 

Bruce shoots Natasha another short glance, but gestures for Clint to continue.

“Can’t we just forget about this?” Clint asks, getting frustrated. The last thing he really wants to do is lay himself out there for both Natasha _and_ Bruce. 

“You promised,” Natasha says sternly.

Clint drops his head into his hands and drags his palms over his face. He looks back up, chin in his hands and elbows on his knees. 

“If it would be easier, we could run tests?” Bruce starts to suggest. “Pick out anything we see before determining if-”

“Hell no,” Clint interrupts again. “I had enough doctors digging around in my brains after L- after New York.” He hates how he still struggles to say that name. “Forget it. We can talk. I can explain it.”

So he begins with the bare bones of it, everything he’s told Natasha and nothing more. The way time passes (“a day here, then the same day there”), the feelings, smells, abilities that a dream wouldn’t normally have. He only stops when Bruce pulls out a legal pad and pen, eyeing him warily.

“Is it okay if I take some notes?” Bruce asks. Clint can tell he’s choosing his words carefully. “I’ll leave your name out of them. It’ll be helpful to have something to look back on once we see how things progress.”

Clint sends a pointed look at Natasha’s half of the room. She looks confused for a moment. He’d never once asked her to leave any of his visits with the doctors after Loki. Luckily, Bruce seems to understand more of what he’s looking toward.

“Tony?” His tone suggests that his worry is actually not completely unfounded. “I can assure you he won’t read this.” He waves the pad in the air. “He tends to stay away from my stuff, and I don’t think the man realizes people still actually write things down with pen and paper.”

Clint cracks a smile at that. He can't recall a time where he has seen Tony holding an actual pen, now that he considers it. He looks at Natasha who nods at him, a tiny encouragement. And it’s so odd, suddenly. She’d done the same thing multiple times before, when he’d been examined and made to lay every moment with Loki out for all their records in a room not dissimilar to the one he is in now.

The circumstances, however, could not be more different. There is always the chance that this could be some remnant of that magic within him, coming up to the surface, but it’s doubtful. After nearly two years clean _and_ Loki’s reported death, it wouldn’t make any sense for some strange dormant magic to pop up again. He’s different, too. The weeks after New York are all but gone to the exhaustion and concussion he’d been experiencing at the time, but he remembers the months after that of therapy and _talking_ and _feeling_. He’d felt raw. Ripped open and sewn up and forced to rip himself open all over again. Now he feels fine. Confused, naturally, about what exactly is going on in his life, but this is the closest to content he’s actually felt in a long time. 

“So you live with Agent Coulson, in this place?” Bruce breaks Clint away from his thoughts once he finishes writing something else in his notes.

“In Wisconsin,” Clint corrects. “We’re, uh, married.”

Bruce nods stutteringly once, clearly trying to hide any shock he may have felt. Clint can see Natasha in his peripheral vision sit up a little straighter, but he doesn’t look toward her. Not yet.

“Were you in a relationship, before?” Bruce asks, barely glancing up from his notepad to look at him.

Clint snorts. “No, never.” His hands clasp together. “There was _something_? But it never…” He gestures a bit, waving his hands around in a way he hopes conveys ‘it never happened’.

“What exactly is going on in your life when you’re there?” Bruce asks. “Is it very different in just your day to day things?”

“Well I’m definitely not an Avenger,” Clint starts. “Ph- Coulson is a professor. I teach archery and signing, but not through a school. I mostly stay home and- oh. Uh.” His eyes dart quickly to Natasha and back to Bruce. “There’s a- We have a baby, also.”

The pen nearly drops out of Bruce’s hand, and Natasha actually spins in her seat to stare at him more directly. Clint finally returns her look this time; her eyes are wide, but she doesn’t say anything.

“She was already there when these dreams started, I don’t know.” He shifts on his hard seat, looking back at Bruce who hasn’t stopped scribbling. “Natasha said it must just be a dream. I considered some kind of weird wish fulfillment thing, but the last thing I would ever be wishing for is a kid, so what the hell.”

“This has to be something else,” Natasha says once Clint is finished. It’s a complete 180 to what she’d been saying before, but she hadn’t known the whole story before either. She knows Clint’s hang ups. She knows his childhood. She knows he doesn’t have a lot of interest in trying to prove himself a better father than what he’d had.

“Loki?” Bruce asks, almost like he doesn’t even want to say the name.

Clint shakes his head. “I’ve been cleared. Multiple times. Plus, he’s dead, it’s not him.”

“The only way we can really find anything out definitively is through testing.” Bruce says it like he’s already bracing himself for Clint to get angry.

Clint does not let him down. 

“Nope.” He stands quickly from where he was seated. He’s not running out of the room, but he’s not sticking around, either. “No testing, thanks. I’m fine. This is weird, but I’m not in any danger.”

“Not physically,” Natasha speaks up, moving to rise out of her seat also. “This could become emotionally dangerous. You could be compromised.”

Clint raises his hand to make her stop speaking. “I’m fine,” he repeats. “It’ll run its course and go away. You can stop worrying.”

He leaves quickly before she can follow him or Bruce can say anything else, but he can still see the expression on both of their faces even after he's gone. Unashamed and unhidden concern.

Even staying in the tower is too close to that room and situation to handle. He leaves to wander the city alone, hands in his pockets and hoodie zipped high with his hood up. It's March and winter isn't quite ready to leave the city yet. It's not as cold as Wisconsin, but it's not exactly comfortable either. He ducks into a coffee shop when the wind picks up and cuts a little too sharp through him. Sadly he didn’t bring his wallet with him to see Bruce, so he can’t buy anything, but he takes his time looking at the mugs and things they have for sale all the same. 

He’s not sure he would want to buy any coffee anyway, despite how nice it smells. The caffeine will just keep him powering through the day when he kind of just wants it to end so he can sleep and go back to his other life.

Sure, things there are super weird. The whole being a dad thing is kind of insane and he’s pretty sure Phil thinks _he_ is insane, but it’s nice. It’s calmer there in a lot of ways. He’s not fighting bad guys or getting knocked around. He doesn't have a new array of bruises every week. He doesn’t have to keep dodging the worried looks and questions of his friends. No one has once surprised him by following him into the bathroom and peeping into his shower time.

He's not sure that the whole peeping thing would be entirely out of the question if Emily weren't there, though. That's one thing that makes him a little more thankful for the baby shaped wrench thrown into his life. He'd always heard that babies were essentially eight pounds of screaming cockblock, but he can see now how that might be true. There aren't many private moments he gets to have with Phil. Either one or both of them have to be with Emily at all times, and by the time she's asleep at night, they're both ready for bed too. Phil is always especially tired on school nights.

Clint turns to leave the coffee shop, feeling sufficiently warmed up from huddling inside the small building. He turns back in the direction of the tower, but heads off course. He may be ready to head back to his own apartment, but he's not in any rush to get there.

He thinks more about Emily being the reason the physical side of his relationship with Phil seems to be minimal at the moment. He should probably thank her while he feeds her applesauce in the morning.

It's not that he doesn't want anything physical with Coulson. Hell, he has memories of some very vivid daydreams that would prove otherwise. But that's exactly it. All those things he wanted were with Coulson. Shield agent, recruiter, huge Captain America nerd, and his direct superior. He doesn't mind playing house with Phil in his dreams, but it's not the same. He may be virtually identical in every conceivable way to the Coulson he knew, but it's not possible that he is the same man.

He's just not Clint's to want. 

By the time he makes it back to his apartment, it's still only early evening. He turns no lights on and locks up behind himself even though the action is meaningless to most of his current friends. They could check if he's home or get in if they really wanted. He drops himself onto the plush couch in his living room, wasting his time until it's a reasonable hour for sleeping. 

\-----

“Clint, Emily needs her medicine.”

Clint grunts when a solid hand nudges his shoulder but doesn't otherwise move.

“I have to go in a bit early today,” Phil elaborates.

Clint hums at him.

“Alright, then.” Clint can tell he's shrugging just by his voice. Coulson never shrugged really, or, not physically. He voice-shrugged. The sound is similar here but with his eyes still shut, he doesn't know if the shrug he heard was physical also or just vocal. “Here you go.”

A solid weight is dropped onto Clint’s chest, then. The weight gurgles and smacks his chest a few times.

Clint blinks one eye open at Emily sitting on him, then at Phil still standing next to the bed. He's pulling a blazer on over a deep red sweater vest. It's adorable.

“Medicine,” Phil reminds him kindly but sternly.

Natasha had been right on both counts. Emily is cutting her second tooth and working her way into an ear infection. The medication she's been on for a few days has helped a lot though; she's been in much better moods which has been great for Clint’s stress. 

“I'll see you this afternoon.” Phil leans to press a quick kiss on both Clint and Emily.

When he pulls away, presumably to gather the rest of his things and leave, Phil freezes and pulls an almost imperceptible double take at Clint and Emily on the bed. After simply staring for a moment, Phil grabs his phone from his pocket and snaps a picture of them on the bed, then a second when Clint gets with the program enough to do his best early morning attempt at a smile.

Phil smiles at them both one last time and then he's gone. 

It only takes another minute for Clint to drag himself out of the bed with Emily clutched to his side. The memory of her screaming and crying from the pain of her earache is enough motivation for him to get her medicine quickly. 

She has her oatmeal and Clint makes and downs most of a pot of coffee for his own breakfast.

Afterward, with Emily sitting in her bouncy seat, touching all the different textured appendages along the top of it, Clint slouches into the soft couch. This apartment is surprisingly comfortable, he's found. It seemed to be a lot to take in, at first, and he was definitely too caught up in panicking to consider the wide open floor plan around him.

He stands to take another look around the place, keeping Emily in his view as much as he can. He finds mostly predictable things in predictable places; linen closet in the hallway, closet full of winter gear near the entryway, more baby related things than he thought any eight month old could ever possibly need. The one surprise comes behind the long curtains on the wall behind where the couch sits. What Clint had assumed were large windows is actually a big glass sliding door that leads to a balcony. It's covered in heaps of snow still and the windows are frosty, but it looks like a pretty nice spot to lounge in private. The other apartments are mostly out of sight from theirs, and it only overlooks a wide field that is currently so white it hurts his eyes. 

Emily whines from her seat, breaking Clint out of his silent thoughts to look at her. There's nothing wrong, at his initial glance, until he realizes that where he's standing near the window puts him just out of her sights. She coos when he reappears to check on her. 

“I didn't leave you alone, see?” Clint crosses the room to her in only a few steps. Her arms reach up to him when he gets close enough. Clint may find deciphering her different cries and noises frustratingly difficult, but that's a pretty easy to understand motion.

He scoops under her arms and lifts her out of the chair, careful to not pinch her legs in any of the small gaps. It had taken him a lot of tries to be able to get her in and out without Phil assisting. He's a little proud of himself now that he can manage.

“What should we do today, kid?” he asks her.

More often than not, he feels like an idiot if he talks directly to the baby. It seems awkward and pointless, she can't answer or understand him. Phil had mentioned once in passing that talking to babies helps them learn and socialize, so maybe it's important. He refuses to baby talk purely out of principle, though Phil had only seemed amused by that. In response to his question, she sticks her tongue out and blows an almost raspberry at him. He tries, at least.

He takes her with him back to the glass sliding door to look out at the snow, pressing the back of her hand to the cold glass. She jumps from the shock in his arms, pulling her hand out of his loose grip.

The snow reminds him a lot of his own childhood. There'd always been lots of it in Iowa during the winter. He remembers one year in particular, one of the winters his dad had left them behind for, playing outside with Barney in the snow. His mom was dead tired that year, two jobs just to keep the heat running, he and Barney shoveling driveways for whatever people would give them.

One day, though, there hadn't been any fresh snow to shovel, so they had the day off. They played outside until their cheeks were glowing red and their noses were numb and running. When they finally gave up to the cold and hobbled home, shivering and wet, the warm house had welcomed them in with an inviting savory smell.

Mom stood in the kitchen, looking exhausted but happy. She was free of any bumps or bruises, arms bare of sleeves for once but warmed by the heat of the stovetop. A big pot sat on the burner, bubbling away and smelling amazing. She'd informed them that she was making her mother’s chicken and dumplings, the perfect winter dinner.

It had been perfect. Just the three of them and their dinner together.

A little cold hand grabbing at his face breaks him from his memories, still facing the frigid scene outside their door.

“Hey, how about we make put together a warm dinner for Phil,” Clint suggests to Emily. “Or uh, papa? Dinner for papa?”

She bounces a little in his arms, which he takes to mean ‘yes, great idea, weird guy!’ 

Since there's no Barton family heirloom recipe book to speak of, something from the Internet will have to be good enough for chicken and dumplings soup. A scan of the kitchen reveals very little when it comes to ingredients, however, and Clint almost gives up at the thought of a grocery store trip with Emily in his care. Natasha could come for a few hours, but as she gets increasingly pregnant she gets less mobile. Swollen ankles really sound like hell, it wouldn't be fair of him to do that to her for something so minor. 

As scary as it feels, he has his mind set on making this dinner. Phil has been cooking more often than not in the last couple of weeks here, it couldn't hurt Clint to put some effort into things.

He dresses Emily (very gently) into warm clothes, hat, second sweater, pacifier, and a jacket. She fusses under the layers, but Clint would rather have a slightly fussy baby than a cold one and an angry Phil. She's loaded into the car (very gently) and they drive (very cautiously) to the nearby grocery store together. 

\--

They get home and have a little lunch together before Clint sets to work on chopping and preparing vegetables for the soup. Emily sits in her soft mesh sided playpen, splitting her time between watching Clint move around the kitchen and throwing her toys and crawling slowly after them. 

Cooking is actually something Clint really enjoys. It relaxes him, though he never gets the chance normally to do much of it. He loses himself in the rhythm of his actions and the smell of the ingredients, only realizing any time has passed at all when the door opens and Phil is returned home.

“I'm in here,” Clint calls out, leaning so he can be visible from the entryway of the house. He knows Phil is still standing there, removing his shoes, jacket, and tie in that order, the way he does every day.

Phil starts toward the kitchen in his socks, already looking relaxed and pleased to be home. He stops near the playpen to peek in on Emily sleeping soundly.

“Did she go to sleep on her own?” he asks. 

Clint nods. “She was watching and playing and just passed out. I rolled her over and covered her though.” He tries to not sound too proud of himself for doing the most basic things, but he kind of really is. Two weeks ago he would never have touched a baby to roll it over.

The smile he gets from Phil shows that the has a little pride also, but he would never risk the insult to Clint’s pride by telling him so.

“And what's all this in here?” He steps fully into the kitchen where all of the vegetables and chicken are stewing in the creamy broth on the stove.

“Dinner. Chicken and dumplings,” Clint says.

“What's the occasion?” Phil asks, peering into the bubble pot.

Clint shrugs. “It's a good meal on a cold day, I always heard. Wanna help with the dumplings?”

The dough is already all thrown together in a bowl, ready to be tossed in with the soup and fill the house with delicious smells. When Phil unbuttons and rolls his sleeves up to his elbows to squish the dough into balls, Clint swears he can feel the kitchen get a little bit warmer. He rotates to face the sink, washing his dirtied dishes just so that he doesn't have to face Phil or his forearms.

\--

Sitting at the dinner table together with big bowls of soup and soft dumplings is nice. Phil keeps giving Emily tastes of his soup and some of the softer vegetables mashed with the back of his spoon. She seems to like it, but she seems to like most things. 

“My mom used to make it for us in the winter,” Clint explains after a while of watching Phil blow on tiny spoonfuls of soup and sharing with their happy round faced baby. Phil is the only person other than Natasha who knows any details about his past. “Me and Barney. I mean, the recipe is just from the internet, but still…” He trails off, feeling too awkward. Exposed. 

“Thank you,” Phil says before Clint can embarrass himself any further. “For making dinner, but also for sharing. It's nice to have something you grew up with to share with her.”

It does feel surprisingly nice in a way Clint has never considered before. He never thought he would end up with kids to pass things down to, for one thing. Not to mention that his childhood was distinctly lacking in things that anyone would be interested in passing down anyway.

\--

Phil groans when he drops onto his back on the bed, spread out and unmoving.

“I'm still so full, I don't think I can even move.” He's almost whining, which is both cute and interesting.

Cute because, well, Phil Coulson is behind him whining in bed about how he ate too much food. That's very cute just on its own.

Interesting because it makes Clint wonder. Was his Coulson this cute, before? He feels like he often thought he was cute, but those were his strange office quirks that were cute. The way he color coded his memos using different post its was pretty cute, but probably only to Clint alone. The way he would smooth the nonexistent wrinkles out of his tie while he considered his response to difficult questions. Though, okay, maybe only Clint had noticed that enough to discover the trend behind it. 

The point is, is this Phil cute where his Coulson was not? Or did his Coulson also return home and roll up his sleeves, toe his shoes off, whine about eating too much? He'd never had the chance to spend personal time with Coulson before Loki. It's possible the difference between his Coulson and Phil is the same difference that had existed between Agent Coulson and home Coulson. There's no way he can know now. 

“That's what happens when you grow up poor,” Clint says. He's trying to pull on a t-shirt to sleep in. He normally hates sleeping clothed, but it feels odd to do anything else under these circumstances. “You find food that fills kids up and makes decent leftovers.”

His head pops through the shirt finally, and he finds once he turns around that Phil had been ogling. God, this shirt is tiny.

“I think this shirt is yours,” Clint grumbles. “Or a child’s.”

“You should keep it on,” Phil says just as Clint is reaching into his drawer for a new one. “Makes your arms look huge.”

Clint is very thankful he's facing away from Phil enough that he can't see the blush he's sure is rushing up his face. He should have been able to guess Phil would have an arm thing. That explains the unusual interest in the Tom hardy movies. 

“Never mind, this is okay too.” Phil pipes up from behind once more after Clint takes the t-shirt off again.

“Oh, Jesus,” Clint murmurs to himself. Apparently not as quietly as he'd aimed for, because Phil huffs behind him. 

“Hey, a guy can admire, can't he?” 

Clint tries to flatten his hair after pulling on a new shirt that actually fits him.

“No, sure, admire away.” Clint waves a hand in the air. “I'm gonna brush my teeth.”

He does so, slowly. Taking his time to splash his burning face with water as well. Better to be standing around like a dope in the bathroom than trying to scramble to figure out how to deal with a flirty Phil. 

He fakes a wide yawn when Phil wanders into the bathroom after him, sliding past him back into the bedroom and falling into bed. He's not even very tired yet, but he wants to avoid encouraging Phil. It's entertaining, but probably leading right down a path Clint isn't ready to cross right now. 

Phil leans in the doorway to the bathroom with his toothbrush in hand, watching as Clint crawls under the blankets. 

“Today officially starts spring break,” Phil says. “We should make some plans while I have the whole week off.”

Clint hums in question and muffles another (fake) yawn behind a fist.

Phil retreats into the bathroom to spit and comes back to the doorway. “Date night?”

There's a second where Clint just considers how _Coulson_ that had been. Any normal asshole, including Clint himself, would have spoken through the mouthful of toothpaste foam. Clint probably would have drooled on himself and hardly given it a second thought. Coulson had always been too collected to fall into any behavior like that. 

By the time he nods his head in agreement, he's forgotten already what he's agreeing to.

He pretends to doze when Phil is finished in the bathroom, but the act doesn't seem to deter him. Crawling into his own side of the bed behind Clint, Phil moves until he's pressing close.

Clint jumps when the first kiss presses against the back of his neck. It goes along well with the act that he'd been falling asleep, he supposes, though it was unintentional. The following few trail down along his spine and back up. One of phil’s hands cups Clint’s hip and slides along his waist. He pleads with his body to not react in the way it so desperately wants to.

The first hint of tongue followed by barely there scrape of teeth where neck and shoulder meet sends a wave of chills down his spine. Phil's hand brushes across Clint’s stomach, fingers tickling the skin just above where his sweatpants begin. He can hear the sigh that comes out of him as if it came from somewhere else. He didn't make that noise, did he? This is only everything he dreamed of for months before New York. Hell, months before New Mexico. Months before Thor. Years?

He wants to give in. Shouldn't. It's not Coulson. It's dream Phil. He could say no. It would seem weird, but he could. He could fake something extremely unsexy. Explosive diarrh- no not that, Jesus, he can't even think straight. 

Phil is murmuring something behind him, but Clint can't make out the words over the pounding in his ears. That hand is _so_ close and he's really, _really_ fucking hard.

There's a crackling sound from somewhere in the room that manages to break through the haze of Clint’s brain. It's a sound he definitely knows, even if he can't place it right away.

When the room suddenly fills with the sound of crying in the next moment, he recognizes the crackle from the baby monitor that sits on Phil’s bedside table at night.

Phil groans, his forehead dropping onto Clint’s neck where he can still feel his kisses from earlier. When Clint laughs, a short burst of near hysterical giggle, he can feel the puffs of breath from Phil’s own laughs against his back. 

Clint just doesn't know if his own laugh is from relief or not.

“I'll get her,” Phil says when the crying refuses to stop.

He groans when he pulls himself from the bed, finally coming back into Clint’s view as he approaches the bedroom door. He looks rumpled. His pants are crooked. 

Clint can feel himself relax as soon as Phil is out the door. He hadn't even realized he was so tense. He has to force his hand to release its grip on the bed sheet in front of him. 

God, that had been. And nothing had even happened yet.

The slight creak of Emily’s door is audible through the monitor, Clint listens as he tries to convince his body to calm down as quickly as possible.

“Okay, alright, grumpy baby.” The tone Phil reserves for Emily is oddly sweet coming from the voice of a man who once threatened to taze Tony Stark. (A story Clint had made the man repeat at least ten times the week after he returned from billionaire babysitting.)

There's a rustling sound, Phil lifting the baby out of her crib, presumably.

“Are you hungry?” Phil asks when her cries start getting softer. “Or did you just want to interrupt your poor dads.”

It's easy to picture Phil standing alone in Emily’s room with her in his arms, swaying back and forth slowly. He's good with her. It had been unexpected at first, but once Clint was able to think about it calmly, it fit. Even with hardass Agent Coulson it fit somehow.

The sounds of Phil mixing a bottle and muttering soothing words to Emily fades into the background easily after a few short minutes. He's humming quietly while she eats, probably already falling back to sleep in his arms.

Clint is asleep before Phil makes it back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clint is so precious he tries so hard. I'm proud of him.
> 
> Thanks so much again to everyone who has read or commented, you're all angels.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has to face some realities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all holy poo I really broke that two week timeline I had planned for posting, really really very sorry. I'm not abandoning! Not ever. We're just getting to the good parts and I can't wait to see where else we end up. I've been very busy in my life, though, job hunting and planning to move and other big girl not fun things.
> 
> There are more ~sexual themes~ in this chapter and some talk of coping with death, if that makes you uncomfortable.

The morning in New York is a stressful one. There aren't any emergency Avengers calls, which might actually have been a welcome distraction. There's none of the routine kitchen disagreements that tend be muffled noise in the distance. Still, it's stressful. Clint is worried.

He should have known they day would come when he couldn't delay anymore. He'd just really been hoping it wouldn't. Like maybe they were some kind of celibate couple or something. Though if he was married to Phil Coulson, celibacy really wouldn't be his first choice either.

He needs Natasha.

He knocks as he creaks open the bedroom door.

“Hey Nat, are you- oh.” Natasha sits at her small desk, Steve Rogers sitting in a spare seat next to her, both huddled around her laptop screen. Clint wasn't even aware the two hung out on their time off. “I can come back..?”

“No, come in,” Natasha says. She's smiling, obviously comfortable with the captain. “We’re playing twentieth century catch up.”

Steve has a notebook in front of him on the desk, covered in notes in what looks like his own handwriting, and Natasha’s. 

“Have you tried Thai food yet?” Clint asks as he grabs a seat at the foot of Natasha’s bed. Steve shakes his head. “Do that. Thai food and Star Wars is all you need to know.”

“Star Wars?” Steve asks.

“Movies,” Nat answers before he has to ask any further. 

Steve flips a few pages in his notebook back to a different list and writes down a short note. “Right, Star Wars.” He stands up from his seat, stretching his arms above his head. “Hey, I actually gotta go. Jarvis has been helping me apartment hunt, I should be getting a call from someone soon about a place.”

“Jarvis?” Clint’s head quirks to the side. “You know SHIELD could set you up just about anywhere, right?”

“Oh I know,” Steve says simply. He waves on his way out the door, notebook in hand.

They wait a moment in silence, both aware that Steve can probably hear them from halfway down the hall.

“You two are close?” Clint finally asks. 

“Clint.” Natasha’s voice is full of warning.

He raises his hands in front of him. “I'm not saying anything. I think it's nice you talk to someone other than me, though.”

“I have friends!” Natasha defends herself.

“Mhm.” Clint smiles at her. “Lots.”

“Did you just come here to pester me?” Natasha asks. “Or did you- is everything okay?” It's almost funny how quickly her teasing can turn into concern. 

“I'm fine,” Clint insists. “I just ran into a kind of- I don't know. A problem?”

Natasha lifts her feet so she's more crouching on her chair than sitting in it. 

“A problem here? Or…”

“There,” Clint answers. “A Phil thing.”

They both fall silent for a while, Natasha watching him expectantly.

“Well?” she asks, waving a hand in front of her. “I can't help if you don't elaborate a little.”

“It's a little…” Clint hesitates. He's never really been one to blush at the subject of sex, especially not with Natasha, but something about this is different. “Phil was getting handsy, I guess? I froze up. I didn't know what to do.”

She gives him a very ‘is that all?’ look. “Do you want to sleep with him?” she asks, very plainly.

“Well, god, that's complicated, isn't it?” Clint shifts on her bed. He tugs on his shirt and rubs a hand across his stomach. That feeling of Phil’s fingers brushing across his skin still seems so fresh. “I do, obviously. I did here, before. I do there, too, now.”

“But?” She fills in where he does not. 

“I guess it depends on what this is, I think. I mean, say this is all some kind of weird dream made up in my head. Then hell yeah I want to. If it's anything else…” He stops, trying to gather his thoughts into some kind of order. “What if this is some kind of alternate reality or something? Some alternate Clint in a world where Phil didn't die.”

She considers this. “We’ve had crazier things happen than that, it could be possible,” she decides. 

“Right?” Clint huffs a breath of an almost laugh. “But if that's the case, I'm not really his husband Clint like he thinks I am.”

“So you think he doesn't want to sleep with you, he wants to sleep with this potential other world you?” He's thankful all at once to have had Natasha around for as long as he has. She’s always able to connect the dots that Clint lays out for her.

“It feels like I’m tricking him or something,” Clint says. “Making him think I’m someone else to get what I want.” 

“You don’t even know that that’s the case, though. I think you’re making this harder for yourself than it needs to be,” she says. Clint shrugs. It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either. “Does it really make you that uncomfortable?”

“Yeah, kind of? I know it's probably stupid. It's probably not even real.” He sighs. “But there's always that chance. And if it is, it's fucked up, right?”

Natasha tugs on a strand of her hair, twirling the end around a fingertip and pulling at it to inspect. She makes a face when she finds a split end. “We've both had to do fucked up things for missions before. You could think of it like that. If you really don't want to, you can just tell him you don't want to. Or you can grit your teeth and power through it.”

“Yeah,” Clint grumbles. He flops back so he's laying on the bed, feet still planted solidly on the ground. “Yeah I guess those are my options.”

He takes a while to dwell on that. He's been hoping that talking it out would magically create a solution for him, but it's just as complicated as ever. Maybe he is really making this more difficult than it needs to be, but he can't stop feeling wrong about it. 

A socked toe pokes his shin after a few silent minutes.

“We’re okay, right?” Natasha asks, almost shy. 

Clint looks at her, baffled, wondering why the hell they would be anything less.

“I know I kind of forced you to talk to Bruce yesterday, I shouldn't have.” 

“When has that ever stopped you before?” Clint asks, smiling at her. “Plus you were kind of right. This can't stay secret forever.”

“Still,” she says. “It's up to you next time. When you're ready.”

“I'll let you know, but yeah, we’re okay.”

“So.” Natasha smiles, and the difference is visible after the confirmation that their friendship is stronger than one slightly forced visit to the doctor. She's relaxed, happier, eager again to tease. “How has fatherhood been treating you?”

“Oh my god,” Clint groans, but he's laughing through it. “I'm clueless. I have no idea how babies work.”

“How old is it?” she asks, still smiling.

“Emily. She's eight months. Which doesn't mean a whole lot to me.” 

“How's daddy Coulson?” 

“I don't know, god, cute?” He tells her about his strange new family life with Coulson. About Emily, and how much she can stress him out but how much he appreciates how cute Phil is holding and doting on her. He tells her about Phil’s job and his classes. The totally domestic double life he's living in this bizarre dream land or universe or whatever.

“He's a professor. He has bookshelves full of academic books and journals.” And Captain America comics, he doesn't say. “I'm still just Clint, it seems like. I don't get how that Phil would want to marry me.”

“Ours would have,” Natasha says without a hint of being unsure. 

It's something he and his therapist had talked about at great lengths over a year ago. Don't dwell on it, don't think about the what ifs or the could have beens. Focus on healing and moving on and living life. That's a bit harder to do when he has to see Phil every night. 

Maybe his Phil here would have married him one day. There's no way to know. He can't live his life thinking about how he fucked that up though. Maybe these dreams are just the world’s way of working things out. 

\----

For the first time, Phil is still asleep when Clint wakes up in Wisconsin. He has bags under his eyes, even in sleep, but he looks peaceful. His breaths come out in little huffs, too far away for Clint to feel them, but he can hear them. Phil doesn't snore, he realizes all at once. Coulson hadn't either. They'd shared enough rooms before while on missions together for Clint to know. The only time the man had ever snored was the night after his nose had been broken by some mob nut in the middle of nowhere, Romania. Clint had been able to set it pretty straight, luckily, but he'd been so swollen he snored all night long. It was as hilarious as it was irritating. 

When Emily starts to make little fussing noises over the baby monitor, Clint drags himself from bed quietly. It's spring break, Phil deserves to sleep in a little bit.

\--

Phil wanders into the living room a while later, where Clint is sitting with Emily on his lap, (mostly) holding her own bottle to her lips. Some cartoon is playing on the tv in front of them that she hasn't even glanced at once. 

“Fresh coffee in the kitchen,” Clint says as Phil meanders past him. He looks half asleep still, but in a relaxed lazy way, not a stressed exhausted way. 

He returns and slides onto the couch next to Clint with a mug of dark coffee.

“This is perfect, thank you,” he says softly after his first sip. 

“Tired?” Clint asks. He's half teasing, but Phil hums and nods through his next mouthful of coffee. 

“Someone decided she didn't want to sleep in her bed anymore, she wanted to sleep on me.” He pokes Emily’s foot as he speaks, making her laugh and dribble formula down her chin. Clint catches it with her cutesy bib before it can stain her clothes.

“Barney told me once I went through a phase of refusing to sleep anywhere but my stroller,” Clint says. “It drove everyone crazy.” They both laugh.

“It's so nice to be home.” Phil smiles. His finger that had poked Emily drops to brush against the outside of clint’s leg. “I can't wait to have all summer together.”

Summer is still months away. Clint doesn't even know if he’ll still be here then. He doesn't know if he wants to still be here. It's just been two weeks and he already feels so frayed.

“Any plans?” he asks. 

“Aside from date night?” Phil pauses to think. “I haven't had a nice middle of the day nap in _months_.”

Clint laughs unexpectedly, startling Emily still comfortably seated in his lap. She looks up at him from where her toes had distracted her from her bottle and laughs back at him, wide gummy smile stretching her cheeks. He sometimes thinks he could almost do this for real. He doesn't really know babies, but Emily is so sweet, it's not hard to see why they would want to adopt her. 

Phil obviously adores her as well. Clint never saw him look at anyone when he was alive the way he looks at her.

“I don't know,” Phil carries on. “We should take Emily somewhere. I know it's still cold, but there has to be something we can do.”

“She's a little small for snowmen,” Clint points out. “Indoors?”

Phil hums and drops his head back on the couch, eyes closed. “We’ll search for something later. I'm relaxing.”

Clint huffs another short breath of a laugh and turns to coax Emily into finishing her bottle. Phil eventually shifts and slides until he's leaning against Clint’s shoulder, coffee mug still in his hand. He takes a few more gulps without opening his eyes. 

“Do you have class tonight?” Phil breaks the silence. 

“Nope,” Clint answers. His class had covered that earlier in the week. Some were on break and some weren't, but enough would be gone to make the class mostly pointless. He lifts Emily, now done eating, and drops her onto Phil’s lap. “You're on burping duty. She spit up on me the other day and it's gross.”

\--

Their day off together is surprisingly normal. It's not quite boring, but it's not what Clint had expected, either. 

Maybe he'd somehow adjusted to his own little routine without ever realizing he was doing it. Phil tends to leave in the morning after spending what time he can with Emily before work. Clint has googled a few routine suggestions for babies at Emily’s age and worked around to find his own. With a schedule set out in front of him, he can move from breakfast to play times and nap times without spending most of the time feeling lost. Sometimes Phil will come home from work and Emily will still be napping.

The routine passes the time quickly, but with Phil still home the routine is broken. It's a little weird. Not bad, but weird. 

Phil’s still the much more capable one out of the two of them, so Clint is sure Emily appreciates having someone around who isn't still struggling to change her diapers properly. 

Neither of them bother to change out of pajamas, trading Emily between them for playtime and pokes and giggles. Phil sits on the floor with her, holding her weight so she can stand on wobbly legs. She's definitely not ready for walking on her own yet, but it's fascinating to watch her try to figure it out. Clint can practically see the gears turning in her head as she takes in all of her surroundings. 

He watches her spot a toy across the room, and when Phil sets her back down, go crawling after it. As annoying as it may be, he can kind of see why parents can never shut up about their kids. 

“What are you thinking?” Phil asks, watching Clint watch Emily.

“I dunno, I just-” he looks away from where Emily is now celebrating by drooling all over her toy. “Babies are way smarter than I thought.”

Clint hadn't ever had any babies in his life really. One of his older cousins had had a baby when he was pretty young. She was pretty young too, still in high school. He wasn't allowed to hold the baby, just look from a distance. He can only remember the adults talking like it was a bad thing, not understanding why they wouldn't be excited. He understands now, as an adult, but that was about all the experience he's had. He never got to see one grow and learn before. 

He never really had days like this before either, in his memory. Just lazy cozy family days sitting around, having fun. 

Things were highly strung when his dad was around. He always knew there was a wrong step to be taken, but never knew what it was until it was too late. And days when the old man wasn't around were still tough. Struggling with money and food is a sure way to ensure no one is doing much relaxing. 

It's nice, though. It's new. Still a little scary and he still feels like he's trespassing, but he thinks maybe he could live with something like this. It feels… good. 

\--

Clint takes his time stepping out of the shower and into the steamy bathroom. He's not exactly anxious about evening with Phil, but his nerves aren't quite settled either. After the last night he'd had here and his conversation with Natasha at home, he doesn't know where he stands anymore. He dries himself and tries to not worry about it. It'll be fine. 

Phil is standing in the living room, doing an elaborate rocking and weaving dance with Emily in his arms. He stops when he sees Clint, though, rushing over and depositing her into his arms. 

“She spit up on me, but she's mostly asleep,” Phil says. “Just keep rocking her so I can shower.” He walks away, pulling his shirt so it isn’t touching his front along the way. 

Not the biggest fan of trying to mimic that exact dance to put a baby to sleep, Clint adjusts his hold so she’s lying upright on his chest rather than cradling her. He alternates patting and rubbing his hand across her back but holding still, something that has worked before around naptime when she gets extra cranky. It seems to be okay, at first, until she starts to fuss. When he can tell she's working her way into full on crying, he starts to bounce a little in place while continuing his back patting. 

This progresses until he's bouncing and weaving in the same fashion Phil had been. He just really hopes he doesn't finish his shower too soon and walk in on him. 

She falls asleep relatively quickly after that, unable to hold her eyes open anymore. Her head droops and Clint has to shift again to support her with his arm better. She's pretty cute when she's awake and in a good mood; she's somehow even cuter sleeping, with her little chubby cheeks and mouth hanging open. Her dark hair is still too short to do anything but mostly stand straight up, but it's enough to make her look like she could almost really be Phil’s kid. And isn't that an idea; a little mini Coulson running around in the world. He has to stop himself from laughing and waking Emily when he imagines a tiny sized Coulson in a suit playing with other kids. 

She goes into her crib with ease (for once), her little hands relaxed next to her head with the soft tiny blanket pulled over her like always. 

Already thinking of what to queue up on Netflix, Clint leaves her room feeling pretty good. That lasts all of two seconds before he's stopped dead in the short hallway. Phil is standing in the doorway to their bedroom, still damp from his shower. Still in just a towel. He looks more built than Clint had expected. He has more chest hair than Clint had expected. Clint should stop staring.

Christ. 

Phil laughs, so he may have just said that aloud by mistake.

Phil jerks his head and disappears into the bedroom, and Clint’s legs trail after him without his brain’s permission. Though his brain is a little too busy going _fzzt-pop_ to tell his legs to stop moving. Because, seriously, chest hair. 

He's barely stepped into the room before they're kissing. Clint’s hands fly up instinctively. He wants to push away, he thinks at first, but then there's that chest hair again. Only he's touching it now. _Fzzt-pop_. They're fairly short kisses, but Phil is wrapped close for them and holding on, needy for them. It’s too easy to lose himself in returning them.

“Before she wakes up,” Phil finally breaks away long enough to say. 

The distraction of kissing Phil gone, Clint actually gets enough oxygen to his brain to have a coherent thought. He should stop this. It would be the right thing to do. Then Phil nibbles at his earlobe and his brain turns off again. 

His hands drop to the waistband of Clint’s loose pants, Phil pressed so close that Clint can feel him through his towel. More kisses and gentle nips trail down his neck and back up, and Clint gasps into another kiss when Phil’s thumbs push under his waistband to brush over his hipbones. 

The conversation he had with Natasha in his own world replays in his head when Phil pushes him onto the bed firmly. He tugs at Clint’s pants, making him suddenly wish he had bothered with underwear after his shower. If it makes you that uncomfortable, just tell him you don't want to, he tells himself. Natasha’s voice is in his head; just tell him no. 

The problem with that is he pretty visibly wants to. And he can’t really make his mouth do the shapes it needs to do to make words. So when Phil kisses him again and those hands are still exploring and, oh, there goes the towel, he lets that happen. And when Phil pulls away to ask ‘how do you want it’, he swallows. has his mouth always been this dry? ‘Just like this’ is his response, traitorous brain finally letting words happen without permission again. 

Sex with Phil is both what Clint had expected before and not. 

Admittedly, his fantasies before had usually been a bit more ‘I've been a very bad agent etc etc pound me into your desk sir’ with side sprinklings of ‘we’re all alone out here on this mission aren't we sir cue porn music’. This isn't that by any stretch. It's married, if that makes any sense. Phil is familiar with Clint, he knows where to touch and how to move with him in a way that's almost unnerving. Clint has never experienced it before. 

But it's still undeniably Phil Coulson. Intense in that reserved way of his, the way he was always kind of intense with everything he did. The one aspect Clint had never been able to decide on, in his fantasies, was if Coulson would have been on the quiet side or noisy. But if the sound he makes when they slide together shoots through Clint’s nerves (to be fair that could also be the fingers working him open), it's nothing compared to the one he makes as he slowly pushes into Clint. Half breathless and definitely needy, eyes squeezed shut for just a second. Clint already knows he's going to do every every thing possible to memorize that noise forever.

He's not chatty, thank god. Clint is in no place mentally to be keeping up with charming banter at the moment. He does ask once, breathless, if Clint feels good, to which he gets a half-coherent ‘fuck’ in return. It makes Phil laugh, which is somehow not at all as embarrassing as it maybe should be. 

Afterward, boneless and exhausted, Phil uses a baby wipe to clean away any remaining traces of their activities from Clint’s skin. 

“Are you gonna powder me, too?” he asks.

Phil chokes on a laugh, something small that devolves slowly into a complete fit of giggles. His forehead drops into Clint’s shoulder, breathless now from laughing instead of exertion. 

He plants a kiss at Clint's temple and Phil is gone, wandering across the room bare as the day he was born to throw everything into the trash. He slides quickly back under the covers with a little shiver, curling up on his side. The smile sent Clint’s way is lazy and sleepy and happy.

He'd had that thought, after talking to Natasha, that this life with Phil may be some sort of odd gift. The universe setting itself to rights. Now, though, he's not so sure, in bed next to a tired and lazy Phil, looking satisfied with himself. Living this life as a normal adjusted adult. Everything that he could never really hope to have in reality, even before being an Avenger.

It’s a perfect little life, handed to him every day with the knowledge that it isn't real. That it can't be, and why. This isn't a gift, this is punishment. For Loki, Germany, New York, Phil. For his sins. 

“I don't deserve this,” Clint decides. He doesn't deserve having this dangled in front of him and snatched away every day. And even if it is a gift… he doesn't deserve that either. 

Phil’s eyebrows furrow briefly, looking unsure of where this thought could have come from. He reaches to grab Clint’s left hand resting on the mattress, playing with the ring on his third finger, a reminder. 

“Let yourself have nice things,” he says. He starts to say something else, but is interrupted by a wide yawn. “I'm going to blame the fact that we have a baby for why I'm so worn out, otherwise I'd just be getting old.”

It makes Clint smile weakly; he can't convincingly force anything more just yet. He can barely even bring himself to look into Phil’s eyes. That’s when he sees something odd. Wrong. Phil’s chest is still bare and only half covered, god help him, and there’s a jagged scar extending straight through the middle.

Clint mostly knew where Phil had had scars before, in real life. Where he’d been stabbed in the shoulder when he was a fresh agent and the stiff scar tissue would still ache sometimes. When he’d been shot in the thigh and only survived it because of Natasha’s quick thinking and tourniquet. 

“You okay?” Phil squeezes Clint’s hand.

Clint nods shortly, shutting everything out of his mind. “M’tired,” he mumbles and rolls onto his other side. Phil slots easily behind him, the same position they'd been in the night before. Fingers comb through Clint’s messy hair, brushing it away from his face.

He thinks he feels a kiss pressed against his shoulder, but he can't really tell. 

\-----

He wanders the halls of the tower aimlessly, early enough that the sun is barely up yet and he can safely assume everyone else is still asleep, having dreams like normal people. He'd woken up with an anxious energy thrumming through him, a need to pace and think and, maybe after breakfast, work it out in a gym. 

His assumption that everyone would be asleep is proved wrong when his blank minded wandering draws him into the community kitchen, the only one anyone ever uses. Even his own private kitchen is depressingly empty of anything other than coffee and maybe some old carrot sticks. 

Steve stands in the kitchen, looking fresh off a good run, breath still coming heavy between long drinks of water. He looks as surprised as Clint feels to see someone else up and around. 

“Morning,” he says good naturedly. Clint nods in reply. 

Clint decides, eh, fuck it, he's kind of obligated now, and plops into a seat at the island in the center of the kitchen. At least the possibility of food is here, so staying isn't too much of a chore. 

“You always up so early?” Clint asks, one finger rubbing roughly at an eye. 

Steve smiles. Not his Blinding Captain America smile, something a little more real. “Usually,” he answers. He grabs an apple from the fridge and grabs a seat across from Clint. “Easier to start the day after a run and a shower, too much energy otherwise. You?”

“Hell no,” Clint says through a laugh. If there's one thing he's never passed up on before, it's sleep. “Just these dreams I've been having are messing with me, I needed to think.”

Steve chews thoughtfully, finally nodding like he agrees. 

“We all have nightmares sometimes,” he says. “I know I do. Sometimes that's what I'm running off in the morning.”

Clint stays silent, surprised initially, until he remembers that this is really Steve Rogers. The guy from the stories and the comics and the movies. He isn't just haunted by New York, like Clint has been, this is a man who fought in World War II. Who has lost more before hitting thirty than Clint has ever even had. 

“Kind of nightmares, I guess,” Clint says. “I don't know what they are.”

Steve looks like he understands more than Clint expected him to, but he doesn't pry. He isn't ready to share this thing he's having with anyone other than Natasha just yet, and Steve doesn't have to open up to him if he doesn't want to. 

“Listen, I know I'm not the picture of mental health, but talking it out can help,” Clint starts quietly. “I have Tasha, but if you need someone…”

Steve raises a hand between them, half eaten apple still gripped between two fingers. “I know, I appreciate it, really. I just-”

“Not yet?” Clint interjects when Steve hesitates. 

A sigh deflates Steve’s wide shoulders, but he looks relieved rather than defeated. “Not yet,” he confirms. “I'm still getting used to the idea of- of people being gone who I just saw a couple years ago.”

Clint smiles, trying hard to not look like a pitiful bastard. “Me and you both, buddy.”

Steve’s eyebrows pull together briefly in thought, adding two and two and getting four. His eyebrows shoot up when he catches Clint’s eyes again. “Agent Coulson?” he asks softly. 

Well there goes that particular cat out of its bag. 

“We worked together for a long time, he recruited me,” Clint says. What he really means is _he saved me_ , but it's still a little early to be getting dramatic. “He was important.”

“How do you deal with it?” Steve asks. His voice has gone quieter, almost sad sounding in a way Clint has never heard from the man. 

“I didn't, at first,” Clint admits. He's starting to wish he'd also grabbed an apple earlier just to have something to do with his hands. “Then I had to. I had to do therapy and everything if I wanted to get back into SHIELD. I'm still dealing with it now, too.”

Steve nods slowly at first, eyes unfocused while he absorbs the words. “I guess it's never really something that goes away, huh.”

“Probably not,” Clint says with a heavy sigh. 

“And your therapy, it helped?” Steve asks. He doesn't sound skeptical, but he does unsure.

“Therapy wasn't much of a thing in your day, was it? Even my dad made a big deal of not believing in it, but he was an asshole.” Clint says. “Lots of people are in some kind of therapy these days. I would say yeah, it helped.”

“Thanks.” Steve smiles a little bit. He stands and tosses out his apple core. “Listen, I really need to shower this run off before Tony yells at me for stinking up his kitchen.”

They both smile, knowing exactly that happening is a very likely scenario, and wave each other off. Clint heads back out of the kitchen and toward Natasha’s room in a beeline.

She's awake, still in bed on her side, scrolling endlessly on her phone. Clint crawls in behind her, careful not to bounce too much, sliding close and holding on tight. He presses his face between her shoulder blades, taking in her smell; laundry, soap, a light perfume she saves for time away from stealth missions, Natasha. Her hair tickles against his eyelashes. 

“I'm ready.” He tries to sound sure of himself. Her slim fingers wrap around one of his hands. “I want to figure this out. I want to talk to Banner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like if you want to find me between chapters and also see how much of a crush I have on sebastian stan I'm on [tumblr](http://qianwanshi.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang tries to get down to the bottom of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> science montage! Things get a little emotional, everyone just wants to figure things out.  
> PS- thank you all again & again for comments & kudos, I never expected them.

“So these dreams, this life, it's still consistent?” Bruce asks, sitting at the same desk and facing Clint sitting on the same hard table as before. 

“Same as last time, yeah.” Clint picks a piece of fuzz off his pants. “Day here, day there. Married, baby, work.”

“So, what changed?” Bruce even has that same notepad in his hands as last time, though it doesn't seem to have any extra notes, thank god. The thought of Bruce spending his personal time working on Clint as a subject is really embarrassing. 

“I just want to know what it is,” Clint says. “If I know what it is, I don’t have to feel guilty or worry about what happens in it.”

“Do you know how long it’s been?” Bruce asks, considerately not prying into Clint’s half-confession about feeling guilt.

Clint nods shortly. “I have a planner there. I don’t write much in it in case Phil checks it, but I marked the first morning. It’s been sixteen days there, tonight will make seventeen.”

Bruce scribbles this into his notebook. “So it started on around the 20th?”

Clint closes his eyes in thought, trying to remember the specific date he’d drawn that first red star on. Emily’s birthday was the 22nd, and the dream first started a day or two before that. “Yeah, that seems right.”

“Okay, well, we can run some scans right here in the lab, if you're comfortable with that?” Bruce asks. “Jarvis is equipped with practically any type of scan we could want without any of the medical equipment, and privacy barriers that even Tony can't override.”

“Um.” Clint swallows down that instinctive fear that rocks through him. “Right, okay.”

“We don't have to jump right in, though,” Bruce continues. “I actually was thinking you should make a list. If we want to work this out, the more details we have on record, the better.” 

He flips to a fresh page in his paper pad, crossing the room in a few short steps to give it and a pen to Clint. “Start with just similarities and differences, at first,” he says, sitting once again. “There might be more crossover than what you've been thinking.”

Natasha wheels closer as Clint begins to write on the pad whatever comes to his mind, the list of differences growing rapidly. She doesn't peek at what he's writing until he moves so she can see the paper. She'll know if he forgets something, probably better than he would know.

“This seems pointless,” Clint murmurs as he continues to write. 

Behind them, Bruce is typing rapidly at his computer, seemingly not paying attention to them as they work.

“Half of science is just writing stuff down,” Natasha whispers back. Clint has to try not to smile.

There's a pause where Clint catches himself chewing on the end of Bruce’s pen, shooting the back of his head a guilty look. There are a lot of things he can't be sure about, so he creates a third ‘I don’t know’ list and writes them down. He knows Phil’s coffee is the same and he always hated coconut, but he doesn't know if Phil used to hum along to the radio while washing dishes or fantasize about taking afternoon naps before he died. He doesn’t know if Phil wore those cute dark framed glasses and did crossword puzzles in bed. He doesn’t know if-

“Did Coulson have a heart condition?” Clint asks Natasha.

She shrugs. “Not that I ever knew of, why?”

“I don't know, it was weird.” He scratches under his lip with a nail, catching on a bit of dry skin he hadn't noticed. He runs over it with his tongue. “He had- he had this scar.” He runs one finger down his chest, tracing the line of where Phil's scar had been. 

“Did it look surgical?” Natasha asks in a quiet voice. 

“Maybe,” Clint replies. The scar had been rough and noticeable, but even the most precise incisions from major heart surgery can be. 

He scribbles the fact of the scar onto the list of unknowns. Something about it being there rubs him wrong in the back of his mind the more he thinks about it. It was a surprise, the night before, but he hadn't taken the time to really consider the whole thing. 

He's chewing on the pen again. If this is all a dream, or something in his head, it's odd enough that he would invent a baby and a completely detailed new life somewhere. Everything else about Phil himself is the same from what he knew. It all makes sense. Except for this scar. 

“You don't have to have everything defined right now,” Bruce pipes up after nearly a minute with no sounds of scribbling from Clint. “We’ll update the list as time goes on, and-”

They're interrupted by a dinging little tune and Tony’s voice speaking from what seems like thin air.

“Hey, whatever secret reasons you've once again locked me out of my own lab for need to wait,” says Tony’s ominous voice. “Important meeting upstairs, let's go.”

Once inside the elevator, all their notes and things returned to the safety of Bruce’s desk, Bruce picks up from where he had been interrupted.

“Learn more things there, if you can, especially if they can be corroborated here afterward. About Phil, yourself, anything. Scans tomorrow as soon as we get a chance.” He finishes just as the elevator doors open to a room holding the rest of the Avengers sans Thor. Clint nods along, Natasha’s quiet presence at his side completely unwavering. 

\--

The urgent call ends up being from the NYPD, not Fury, which usually ends up being a good thing. Sometimes they go to talk with younger inmates, trying to set them back onto better paths. Steve, predictably, has a great track record with that. Other times they need help with certain suspects or situations; that may mean they need Stark’s tech or Natasha’s skills or Clint’s eyes. The police still haven't quite joined up as members of the Bruce Banner fan club yet. 

There’s a hostage situation within the city. Some large business building, disgruntled employee, blah blah blah. Being a full time SHIELD agent was draining and difficult work, but at least he got to go places. Avengering is a series of major world crises split up by chasing down common criminals in the city. No consistency. 

The situation is tense when they arrive, negotiators and cruisers all lined up outside the building. One of them approaches Steve with a walkie. Apparently the employee holding hostages is a Cap fan. A rousing speech on morals and doing the right thing will have everyone out of there in no time, surely. Clint will be home in a few short hours, maybe he’ll get a sundae! Extra sprinkles because he deserves it. 

That's when what sounds like a minor explosion goes off from within the building. Everyone outside jumps into full alert, Clint included. The building exterior hasn't changed or crumpled, but he can see smoke rising in a second story window, which he points out to Steve.

“Tony, scan it,” Steve commands. He turns back to the walkie, addressing the suspect again. “Was that you? Is anyone hurt?”

“No.” the voice that answers sounds young, angry and shaken, a dangerous combination. “No one. That was me. I'm gonna- gonna take what's mine! Ten years and no one knows my name. No promotion! No recognition! This company is on my shoulders and I get nothing!”

Steve continues to talk through the walkie while Tony scans beside him, murmuring about suspect and hostage locations and numbers. Clint wants to just find a high spot and tear gas the idiot already and get the whole thing over with.

\--

It’s hours before they get home again. Even Steve is dragging his ass through the door by the time they get there. Tony is already pouring himself a drink before his suit is entirely deconstructed from his body. 

“Hey, Hawk, want one?” Tony holds an empty glass out toward Clint.

“Can't,” Clint says with only the tiniest of winces. “Concussion.”

Bruce, who was decidedly not invited to the NYPD party, wanders out of the kitchen. “Concussion?” He pauses once he gets a look at Clint’s face. “What the hell happened out there?”

What _happened_ was mister hostage taker had gotten quite a shock when Natasha made her way into the building on the sly and Clint had come to jump through a window to provide some helpful assistance, resulting in a scuffle that ended with a suspect unconscious and Clint with a solid bang on the head, five stitches, a concussion, and a lovely black eye. Probably there was a roomful of happy released hostages but it's all pretty damn fuzzy by that point. 

Bruce, as the uninvited member of their group, tends to at least have copious amounts of take out food prepared for when they get back most times. They're thankful for that, and Clint is thankful for the painkillers handed off to him as well. 

When he makes the announcement that he's heading off to bed early, no one questions him. He genuinely is so sore and aching tired he just wants to be horizontal for a while. 

“Come by tomorrow,” Bruce says as Clint passes by him. “We'll check out that head injury.”

Clint nods and waves over his shoulder on his way out. 

\---

Phil is gone when he wakes up, which isn't all that unusual, but Emily is gone too which is definitely unusual. Phil’s alarm clock doesn't suggest that he'd seriously slept in, there's no note in any room of the house to give Clint any information. He didn't expect the separation anxiety he's feeling of not knowing where his not-family is.

It's an embarrassingly long time before he thinks to just shoot Phil a text and ask where he is is instead of wondering. He's still looking at his last message from Phil (the photo he'd taken of Clint in bed with Emily sitting on him) when he gets a response.

**Emily wanted to surprise you for breakfast :) be home soon**

Clint falls back into bed and under the soft covers happily. He's not sure what it is, but this bed is amazing and it's really hard to drag his ass out of it sometimes in the morning, especially with the winter chill in the air and the warmth under the blankets. 

He scrolls backward in time through some of Phil’s other texts. If Bruce wants him to find out more information about the details of this world, he will. It's strange how he'd initially done plenty of research before somehow falling into the routine and leaving that all behind. How did this bizarre situation ever even manage to become his routine.

The texts are pretty much what you would expect, nothing very interesting. Questions about dinner options, pictures of Emily and of each other with her, a few short ‘miss you’ lines from the middle of Phil’s work day if the timestamp is to be trusted. Clint takes note to try that when Phil is back at work, maintaining normalcy and all that, not that he's been doing a great job of that. 

He checks his pictures next, something he hadn't dared to venture into until now. Again, they're basically what he would have expected. There are a few of Natasha getting progressively more pregnant as time passes and many many more of Emily and Phil. Some of just Phil alone laughing, pushing the camera away based on the heavy blur and angle of the pictures. Some pictures dated just over two months ago must be when Emily had been adopted. There are pictures of Clint surrounded by half built crib pieces and of both of them (plus Natasha) holding a much smaller Emily in their arms. Clint hadn't even realized babies grew that much in such a short amount of time. It doesn't look like she could even hold herself up very well yet. 

There's one of him and Phil together standing and holding Emily between them. It's cheesy looking and silly, but they both look so happy smiling in it. Phil especially, grinning with this tiny life now very literally in his hands. He never had been the type to fear anything. He dove into the most dangerous missions headfirst because he had a team he could trust in (according to himself). If he could trust in Clint to be part of his team here as well, there's no way he would have any fear with something as scary as a baby either. 

“You're still in bed?” Phil’s voice is light from the bedroom door.

Clint looks up from his pillow, surprised Phil had been able to sneak into the room like that. 

“Waiting for my surprise,” Clint offers. 

“What are you smiling at?” Phil asks, coming more fully into the room. Clint can hear Emily jangling in her bouncy chair from the hall.

There's no chance of him putting the phone away and pulling it off without looking ten times more suspicious, so he lets Phil get his look. There's no way of knowing what he'd been expecting, but it doesn't look like he was expecting this. This seemingly sentimental staring at photos of their tiny family. It's not like he would realize Clint is trying to put together this life like some puzzle. 

Phil’s eyes go all soft and he practically melts into a pile of goo next to the bed, the way he's smiling at both the photo and at Clint. He reels Clint into a quick succession of short kisses, lingering for the last one. It reminds him of the hungry way Phil had kissed him the night before. 

“Get out of bed,” Phil says, forehead pressed against Clint’s. “I'm making pancakes, you're making coffee.”

\----

“How are you feeling today?” Bruce asks.

Natasha is absent from this little meeting today. She didn't tell Clint why, but did make it clear that she expects updates afterward. 

“I'm okay?” Clint scratches his nose gently. His face still feels tender after his fight the day before. “Sore, whatever, I think the concussion is fine.”

“We’ll have Jarvis check with the rest of his scans today, just to make sure everything is okay,” Bruce says. He pushes his glasses on the bridge of his nose and pulls a scrap of paper from a printer on his desk. 

Clint nods and shrugs; no reason to fight off one little test out of all the others. 

“We’ll focus on some noninvasive brain and body scans,” Bruce explains. “EEG, EKG, anything that can get us a clear picture, physically, of your brain and brain waves.”

He moves to hand Clint the sheet of paper he'd picked up before. A closer look gives the impression that it's filled with information about the tests, but Clint waves it off. 

“I know the drill,” Clint says bluntly. “All the anagrams and wiggly lines, let's just get it over with.”

He'd been through the whole deal in 2014, long ago enough that it seems pretty distant but recent enough that he can remember it clearly. It had meant hours of sitting in an uncomfortable seat surrounded by people in white coats with probes stuck to his head and chest. Look at the blinking light, close your eyes, stare at that, hold your breath, breathe slowly, look at these pictures. Doctors reading the multiple papers constantly printing from all around him with _hm_ s and _ah_ s the entire time.

To his surprise, this time, Bruce doesn't pull out a mess of wires and equipment, just rolls back over to his desk and grabs his same pad of paper he always has for Clint’s information. 

“Jarvis will scan you as we talk, you can just relax,” Bruce says. “Take Tony’s chair, lay back, if you want. Jarvis is fast, but we’re running a pretty wide array of scans.”

Clint slides into Tony’s cushy chair and gets comfortable. If he's gonna be sitting for a while, it may as well not be on a hard uncomfortable table. 

“I was hoping we could talk more about this while we’re waiting,” Bruce says.

“Uh.” Clint looks around the room. “Is it already started?”

“Scans have initiated, Mr Barton.” Jarvis’ charming accent fills the room. 

That's… Unexpected. He knew obviously that Jarvis is made of pretty complex stuff he could never come close to understanding, but damn. Even SHIELD medical, which is years ahead of most general hospitals, still had to hook him up a hundred different ways to read him.

“So, I wanted to know some more about you and Agent Coulson, if that's okay.” Bruce breaks Clint out of his thoughts. “The more information we have, the better.”

Clint takes a moment to really consider it. For coming up on two years he’s expended a lot of his energy on trying his best to avoid the very topic. He knows Bruce is right, though. And it's not like it's therapy this time, they're trying to solve a (kind of) tangible problem, not working through his grief or anything. 

“Uh, sure. Shoot,” Clint says. He doesn't want to lose his cool once again in front of Bruce. He used to be a lot better at playing the nonchalant couldn't be fucked to care guy. He'd been younger then.

“You two weren't in a relationship before.” Clint nods his head in agreement. “But you were close?”

Bruce has no idea the can of worms he's ripping open with just a simple sounding question. Clint doesn't blame him, he can count on one hand the amount of people who would know.

“He recruited me into SHIELD,” Clint starts. “Dragged me kicking and screaming, which kind of counted as recruitment for me back then.”

He laughs at the memory of sitting around in the interrogation room, not even sure yet if he was arrested or recruited or what. Phil had finally made the offer official over two overloaded trays of cafeteria food, most of which was for Clint alone. 

“I ate the food and told him to get fucked.” Clint sighs. “I liked working for myself, I didn't want to just be a trigger for someone to pull. He understood that.”

Bruce nods. He looks genuinely interested in hearing the story, pen and paper gripped loosely in his hands but his eyes are on Clint. 

“We worked closely together for years and years,” Clint explains. “Before Natasha, before Hawkeye. He was the only person I could trust for a long time.”

“Had you ever talked about being in a relationship with him?” Bruce asks. His bluntness is actually a welcome change of pace for the parade of questions. Therapists want to talk about feelings and ideas and understanding. Bruce just wants the facts.

“Not… Explicitly?” He knows it's a vague response, but they had a pretty vague mutual understanding of their feelings. “We both knew, we had this way of knowing it without words. Did you ever meet him, before?”

“Just briefly,” Bruce says without much emotion.

“Look up the definition of the word professional and you'd see a picture of the guy,” Clint tells him. “All of the baby agents thought he was terrifying, there were genuine rumors that he was a robot once.”

Bruce smiles when Clint does. It hits his eyes in a way Clint doesn't think he's seen on the man before now. It makes him look younger. 

“He was subtle, is what I mean, I guess.” Clint can feel himself really getting lost in his memories for the first time in a very long time, it doesn't hurt as much as he expected it to. “So no, he didn't come out and tell me he wanted anything with me, but I didn't tell him either. He was different with me, though. I noticed it because he knew I would. Like, he never really touched Natasha very much, even though they were just as close as I ever was with him, but he touched me pretty often, just casually. When he was concerned or angry or happy. When he was trying hard to not laugh because I was being a dick.” He'd dug his fingertips into Clint’s leg so hard once there had been bruises for almost a week, all because Clint was signing some less than flattering jokes at Fury’s expense under the table at a meeting.

“Why do you think it never went anywhere?” Bruce asks next. He writes some notes in his pad as he asks.

Clint sighs a little more roughly this time. He's not getting impatient, he believes Bruce when he says it will help, he just doesn't love digging through old emotional issues with company. Or without alcohol.

“I can't really speak for him, I assumed it was just never the right time or it went against some shield code or something.” If he were anyone else, his legs would be bouncing in his seat or he would be rocking the reclining seat back. All those nervous tics had been trained out of him a long, long time ago. He sits perfectly still. “Not to mention that I was an immature shit when we first met, but that gap closed up pretty quickly. There's a lot more difference between 23 and 30 than there is between 36 and 43. I never said anything because I felt like I had all the time in the world to face it, you know? I saw Phil get shot, beaten, stabbed, and everything in between. I was damn near sure he was immortal, so he would be there when I was ready. I didn't see New York coming.”

“No one saw New York coming,” Bruce agrees. 

“I think it would have happened, eventually.” Clint scratches his head and tugs distractedly on an earlobe in thought. “He would have been fifty this year, though, so I couldn't wait forever.” 

\----

Phil stands in the wide living room windows with the curtains pulled back, looking let down. It's as close to a complete white out snowstorm outside as Clint has seen since he was a child.

“I wanted to go out and do something today.” Phil is even pouting a little bit. Clint’s first instinct is to take a picture to show Natasha.

“I'm definitely not driving in that,” Clint says immediately. “Especially not with a baby in the car.” He may be used to taking stupid risks with his own life, but he's not about to get used to it with someone else’s, even if she possibly only exists in his dreams. 

Phil curls up in a spot on the couch near where Clint is standing, shoving his feet under a blanket.

“I hate winter,” he says, putting forth no effort at all to not sound like a spoiled grumpy child.

\----

“I'm still looking more into the scans from yesterday,” Bruce says. He looks tired, Clint wishes he'd thought to bring them both some coffee for their meeting. “Jarvis has his suggestions, but I don't want to come to you with anything prematurely.”

Natasha is with him today, standing close enough that she could grab his hand if she wanted to. 

Clint nods slowly, confused. “You wanted me down here, though?”

Bruce gestures both of them toward their now usual seats which they take quickly.

“I was wondering if we could talk some more, if you have the time?” 

Palms out in front of him, Clint shrugs. “I'm on the same schedule as you are,” he says. “I got time.”

“Have you found anything new there?” Natasha asks. 

“Not really,” Clint shakes his head. “I checked out my phone pictures and I could narrow down our adoption to about two months ago? And Phil hates winter, that's about it.”

Natasha looks very entertained in her seat, almost like she's on the verge of laughing. When Clint shoots her a confused look, she finally speaks. “Remember Podolsk?”

“Holy shit.” Clint laughs. “I completely forgot about that.”

He catches Bruce watching them, completely out of the loop.

“We were there for a week, all three of us, a few others,” he explains. “Dead of winter, cold as fuck-”

“Which he told us, word for word, dozens of times,” Natasha interjects. 

Clint can't stop the smile spreading across his face. “He was always such a stickler for keeping comm lines clear in case we needed them, but he kept grumbling that he was freezing his balls off. When we finally met up again he was so bundled up he looked like that kid from that Christmas movie.”

Natasha laughs openly when Clint sticks his arms out to his side in a mime of what Phil had looked like. 

“I kept trying to get him to say ‘I can't put my arms down!’, but he wouldn't do it.” Clint sighs, still smiling. “He did threaten to shoot me, though.”

“So that's the same.” Natasha waves a hand toward the notepad sitting on Bruce’s desk. “He hates winter in both.”

Bruce jots it down in his messy scrawl. 

“What about your life?” Bruce asks. “You don't have to share what you don't want to, but is your history the same?”

“I think so?” Clint guesses. “From talks we've had, it seems more or less the same. My family, my brother…. I assume the circus. It's hard to ask about my own history without setting off some alarms, though.”

Bruce hums. “That's true. If you find anything major out, though, write it down.”

Clint nods, doubtful that anything new will come along to him. 

“I actually wanted to talk about something, a little,” Natasha says. Her voice isn't really unsure -Clint doesn't think she would ever say the words aloud if she were unsure of them- but it's small and soft. “I was thinking about after Phil was officially announced dead, and kind of- it was weird, wasn’t it?”

It's pretty fuzzy, still, in Clint’s mind. Right after coming away from Loki and New York he's been hustled into some SHIELD containment until he could be evaluated and eventually, after many many visits to medical, be declared a non-threat. 

He knows there was a lot of mess to clean up from the helicarrier as well as the city. Search and rescue crews wandered New York for days and days while Clint sat uselessly in a chair trying to convince his therapists that he wasn't seeing anything from Loki anymore. There was a memorial service for everyone who had been lost to the battle in the city, and a mass funeral for the agents lost throughout the entire ordeal, starting in New Mexico. Clint had seen the list of names and known the part he had played in the deaths of many of them. He didn't go to the funeral, didn't even ask if he was allowed out of his tight little room for the chance to go. The last thing anyone there needed to see was the face of the guy who put some of those names on that list. 

“Phil was important,” Natasha continues. She's looking at Bruce, mostly. Clint already knows too well how important Phil was to shield. “Second to Fury important, honestly, and he didn’t have his own service. His name is on the memorial, he was part of the ceremony that spring, but nothing beyond that.”

“Is that weird?” Bruce asks. “It's a faceless underground government type organization. Those don't usually pick out specific members by name to glorify, do they?”

Natasha is quiet, lips pressed together in consideration. “Maybe you're right,” she finally says. “Something about it just always felt so off, to me.”

“Your gut is never wrong,” Clint points out. It makes Natasha’s lips quirk into the hint of a smile, a little pride in it. She knows he's right. “I always expected he would leave us with, I don't know, _something_. Not money or anything like that, but we were a team.”

Natasha nods a couple times, eyes dark and serious.

“But then considering how he died and my involvement, maybe-”

“No,” Natasha interrupts him sharply, eyebrows narrowed. “You aren't responsible for any of that. He wouldn't want you to blame yourself. He would have had a will, but we never heard of anything from it.”

“It's something we could look into,” Bruce suggests, almost a question, forcing a break into rising tensions. “I know Tony has Jarvis pretty intricately woven into shield’s systems. Only, he would have to be the one to give the order.” Bruce adjusts his glasses on his nose.

Clint isn't dying to pull even more people into his weirdo life problems, especially not Tony Stark, but if that's what it comes down to… He and Natasha share a long, silent look. Phil used to say they reminded him of creepy twins when they did that, like they were communicating with some secret language. 

“We’ll look into it first,” Natasha finally answers for both of them, looking back at Bruce again. 

\----

“I'm ready for this kid to get outta me,” Natasha groans from where she's seated on one of their big soft chairs, slouching against the back. 

They decided that if the weather won't cooperate to let them go somewhere, they would bring something indoors to them. Just the two of them, Emily, Natasha, some movies and board games, and nonalcoholic beverages. There was a bottle of wine in the kitchen, but Phil had given Clint some line about solidarity for Natasha, and so it remains in the kitchen. 

It makes Phil laugh into his (plastic because apparently babies come with child proofing every single thing) cup of orange juice. Clint has to lean forward in his seat to pull his own cup away from a waddling and teetering Emily, using the edge of the table to hold herself on unsteady fat legs. She grabs her own little bottle of baby apple juice with a triumphant squeal and almost loses her balance trying to drink it.

“How much longer now?” Clint asks once he's sure Emily isn't about to crack her head off of any furniture. 

“It should be a month,” she says like the very idea causes her physical pain. “The doctor says it could be even longer.”

“Just be thankful it isn't summer,” Phil says. The soft smile he has on his face so often is one thing Clint could really let himself get used to. Coulson had smiled, obviously, he wasn't _actually_ a robot, but it was less obvious and relaxed. It was something Clint saw because he knew what to look for. “Emily’s previous foster mother said that the heat and swelling were hell together when she was pregnant, and that her feet hurt so badly she couldn't even walk.”

Natasha looks horrified by the idea of it. 

“I can't wait to meet him.” She rubs a hand over her round belly. “But he's killing me and I'm done carrying him around.”

“It'll be nice for Emily to grow up with a friend her own age, at least,” Clint says. He hopes these dreams don't last long enough to watch her grow up. Somehow, sitting on the couch, he's wound up leaning back into Phil's side. It's comfortable, though, so he doesn't pull away. 

\----

“Your eye looks better,” Bruce starts when Clint enters the lab again. 

His eye still looks pretty gross. His concussion is better, though; he doesn't feel like he's swimming around anymore. 

“I've looked at everything Jarvis was able to give us.” He waves a hand and several blue holographic screens raise in the air in front of them. There's the outline of a human body projected in the center, surrounded by graphs and numbers and wiggling lines. The body has different areas highlighted that match up with his recent injuries. “Physically, you seem alright. Or, well, you'll heal.”

Clint knows that perfectly well. This is definitely not his first time getting all banged up while on a mission. He didn't even break anything this time.

“Some things stood out from the results.” Bruce swipes some of the screens away and blows a few up. None of it makes any difference to Clint, he'd have just as much chance of understanding if they were in Chinese. “Nothing to panic about, but stuff to look into.”

“Is there anything about the dreams?” Clint asks. He hates to be pushy, but he also hates to sit around with no idea what’s going on. 

“We’ll be able to know after we look into these results a bit more,” Bruce says. “There are definitely some things going on in your body, but if they’re a cause or effect of the dreams, I don’t know yet.”

Natasha has her chair wheeled up close to Clint’s side again and she wraps one slender hand around his knee. He nods at Bruce, signaling the okay to get started.

The questions are pretty generic to begin with, family history of heart conditions? No, your heart seems fine, don't worry. Family history of schizophrenia? No, I really doubt that's the cause, this isn't how it typically displays. Have you ever had a seizure? Head trauma? (Clint gives him A Look) Anxiety?

“Do you have a history of depression?” Bruce asks. That's finally the question that makes him pause. 

Clint gapes at him for a long moment, shocked. He finally gathers his wits enough to answer “no” at the same time that Natasha says “yes”. His head snaps around to look at her so fast he can almost feel a crick in his neck. 

“What?” She looks back at him, defensive. “Clint.”

“I'm not depressed!” Clint exclaims. “I guess after the brainwashing thing, but I talked about that in therapy, it’s passed.”

“Even before that, though-” she cuts herself off, shooting Bruce a short look out of the corner of her eye. Clint nods at her, barely a twitch of his head, encouraging her to go on. “You… Disconnect sometimes. You disappear and put these walls up.”

“Jarvis noted that your serotonin levels are a bit low,” Bruce explains. “An effect, not a cause. I wanted to rule out any pre-existing conditions.”

Clint is still too caught up in feeling like he’s been slapped in the face to really care about what Bruce is saying. He knows it’s true that he can get stuck in his own thoughts sometimes, and that maybe he beats himself up a little too much when things go wrong, and sometimes he struggles to get out of bed and face his days. But he's not _depressed_.

“It's not a bad thing, Clint,” Natasha says seriously. “It's just part of you.”

Clint feels dumbstruck. He looks at Bruce who seems as gentle and understanding as he ever does. 

“Maybe?” He shrugs at Bruce. He never thought he was depressed before, but maybe Natasha is right? 

“I'd like to, if you'd be comfortable with it,” Bruce starts, distracting Clint from his thoughts, “run another brain scan during your normal night’s sleep.”

Clint hadn't before considered doing that to find out some answers. What if the dreams are some weird brain thing only while he's sleeping, like some kind of night seizure or something? 

“I'm going to look into what we may want to search for, first. So, not tonight, but in a few nights?” Bruce asks. 

Clint nods in agreement. It's not so difficult to agree to now that he knows Jarvis scans so easily and all he has to do is sleep. The worst that can happen is they don't find out anything new. 

“There's not much to suggest these are anything more than really strange dreams so far, but I don't think any of us believe that.” The first hints of frustration pull at Bruce’s face. Not like needing to try more bothers him, but that the answer evading him does. He's a scientist, it probably bothers him a lot more than he lets on. “We’ll find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg I forgot I have [ask.fm](http://ask.fm/qianwanshi) & you know I could talk about this au and others all day long? I would be tickled pink if you could too.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M HERE. A CHAPTER IS HERE TOO. Never have any worries that this won't be finished, it will, things are just a little hard right now. Job hunting and moving into a new place. Some big things! 
> 
> Enjoy :) I hope you finish this one with a few answers and even more questions

“We need to talk to Fury,” Natasha announces in a no-nonsense to the secretary posted in front of the man’s office in tone.

“Mister Fury is in a meeting all afternoon,” the secretary responds without looking up from her computer screen. 

Natasha ignores this response and continues on her path into the office as though she hadn't even been spoken to. Clint walks at her side quietly; he doesn't spare the secretary a glance or a false sympathetic look. This is something that gets done. Today. 

When Fury looks up from the actual mountains of work at his desk, he's surprised. He doesn't show it, he's no amateur, but Clint can still see it on his face. It's not often two agents turned Avengers storm into your office. 

“Thought you were in a meeting,” Natasha says, voice flat. 

Fury looks oddly amused and drops his pen onto his desk, sitting back in his cushy looking chair. “Gotta keep the kids out from under my feet somehow, how the hell else would I ever finish anything around here?” Clint doesn’t love to admit it to himself, but he’s right about that. Guess it comes with the territory of being director.

“You got time?” Clint asks, just to be sure. No reason to be rude. 

“For you two?” Fury asks. “Anytime.”

“We want to talk to you about Coulson,” Natasha says, bluntly. 

Any signs of amusement fall away from Fury’s face in an instant. His eye narrows at the both of them. Clint can't tell if he's suspicious or angry or confused. Maybe it's all three. “What about him?” Fury asks. 

“Where is he?” Natasha asks. Clint quickly realizes this is going to be a no beating around the bush type of conversation. It’ll work fine, Natasha is the best at digging out information, and Fury is probably too smart to be tricked by sweet looks and power reversals unlike the idiots she typically deals with. 

His eye narrows impossibly smaller. “You know precisely where he is, Romanov. He's dead.”

Natasha’s eyes narrow right back. She'd never really had that fear of Fury instilled in her like any other SHIELD agent. Probably because of her non-traditional recruitment and training. “Dead is an adjective, not a location. Is he buried? Where?”

“Coulson was sent to his family, as requested on form 1013-A subsection I don't fucking know,” Fury answers rapidly. “Reportedly, they had a lovely service full of fond memories and tears for Phil Coulson.”

“You didn't go?” Clint asks, honestly surprised. He didn't quite think the two were bffs or anything, but they had always worked closely together. Fury trusted Coulson, and Fury doesn't trust anyone.

“I was a little busy cleaning up after an alien invasion that almost nuked Manhattan.” He doesn't sound defensive. Angry? But he kind of always sounds angry. “I sent flowers.”

“Did he have a will? What happened to his personal belongings here?” Natasha doesn't let up.

“Not that I know of, and I don't know,” Fury takes all of her relentless questioning and flows with it, answering without even blinking. “If it wasn't sent home with his body, it would be in storage somewhere, you know people around here hoard everything in case it becomes useful again.”

They leave Fury’s office feeling mostly unsatisfied. The man is elusive as hell, and even while he gives straightforward seeming answers, he manages to get away without giving an actual answer at all. They basically leave his office with the same amount of knowledge as they'd had when they entered it. It's frustrating as hell. 

“That was fucking pointless,” Clint murmurs under his breath while they leave the building. 

“Not entirely,” Natasha says with confidence. “He gave us more than he thinks he did.”

Clint watches her expectantly. Fury didn't give them much of anything that will be useful. Phil is still dead, a body delivered to a family to be buried in the ground. 

“Give me a day,” she says. “Don't worry about anything, I'll look into it and fill you in.”

“I don't even know what I'm waiting for.” Clint isn't impatient, exactly. It's not a quality he's ever had the luxury of having. He does hate being in the dark, though. 

“They didn't just toss his things in the trash, Clint.” She gives him a slight smile. “I'll ask around, find out if it's still here. It might provide us with something.”

There's a tiny spark of hope in his chest. There might be something they can find. It might have any information at all. He nods, almost trying to convince himself. “Anything is more than we have now.” He loves Natasha more than ever before for going through this with him. “Want help?” he asks. It's been a long time since he's gotten to investigate anyone. 

Nat shakes her head, but it's lighthearted. “You keep up with your own dream research. This'll be easy.”

\----

Phil hands off Emily to Natasha inside her carseat, already snoozing quietly. Clint hands her the two bags packed up with enough extra baby necessities that Clint had asked if they were giving her Emily for the night or forever. Phil smacked him for asking, but he laughed at the same time. Clint was just glad he hadn't crossed any lines. 

So this is the date night Phil had wanted so badly, then. It's not what Clint had envisioned, really. They’re going to dinner together, which fits the stereotype in his mind, but it's not cheesy or overly fancy and stuffy like he had worried about. It suits them.

The restaurant is within walking distance to their apartment. Clint has worked out over time that they don't live on the campus of the school Phil works at, but they don't live very far away, either. It's not a long walk, but Clint huddles close to Phil the entire way anyway. It's still below freezing. They go to a fairly popular looking ramen bar where some of the staff seem to recognize them. They each get served massive bowls of noodles and dressings chosen from the huge list on the menu.

Dinner at home is usually fairly quiet, light conversation and working together to do their best to get more food into Emily than on her. On their date, however, Phil wants to talk about anything and everything. It's nice to hear Phil sounding relaxed and content in a way Clint never got to hear him before. He closes his eyes for a minute and just listens to his voice; it's easy to envision the suit, the calm exterior, the agent. 

A hand wraps around Clint’s from across the table. His eyes open and Phil smiles at him, wearing a soft, warm looking green sweater. 

“Let's go home,” Phil suggests. 

There's wine at home, which is nice. Clint isn't some wine snob who cares about years or colors or what vessel it's drunk out of, wine is wine to him. Not usually his alcohol of choice, but it’s not like he has many options. Phil plays some quiet music from a hidden bluetooth speaker as they drink and, somehow, find more to talk about. Clint tries his best to keep his stories factual but undetailed in case he messes something up. Phil listens to everything he says with this look in his eyes that his Phil had always had. The look of someone _actually_ listening and _actually_ caring. After his first glass is gone, it's impossible to not get lost in that look. 

They trade wine-flavored kisses with red stained lips, slow and lazy, headed nowhere. Phil laughs when Clint breaks away to down the rest of his glass in one go. His cheeks are rosy and warm, his fingers are sluggish when they grab hold of Clint and tug him back in for more. Phil’s hands rest on Clint’s shoulder and chest, until Clint unashamedly guides one toward his hair. He likes his hair being touched, and he's not afraid to ask for what he likes. Phil smiles against his lips and follows his lead, curling his fingers into Clint’s hair. 

“We should move,” Phil mumbles against Clint’s lips after what feels like an eternity of kisses. 

He's probably right. The couch maybe isn't the most comfortable spot for two grown men to cram together to make out. Clint also would be very pleased to be in more comfortable clothes than his date outfit.

“Bed?” Clint suggests. He must be more drunk than he'd thought he was.

It's a blur of short moments after that, tugging out of clothes and into something softer, warmer. Falling into bed, kissing for so long he begins to wonder if his lips will go numb. 

“I really planned on some pretty satisfying sex tonight,” Phil says when they're next taking a minute to just breathe. Holding himself over Clint, eyes flicking rapidly all over to take in the sight of him. “But I kind of just want to do this.”

Clint can't argue with that. 

“I could do this forever.” He can't stop the feeling that he's letting more slip than he necessarily wants to. But it's true. 

Phil smiles, tiny and happy and shining in his eyes, forehead pressing gently against Clint’s. 

“Is it bad that I can't stop worrying about Emily?” he asks. 

Clint shakes his head. How could it ever be bad that Phil cares.

“You're her dad,” Clint replies. He doesn't know what else he could say. “Nat will take care of her.”

“You are, too,” Phil says simply. 

That tipsy feeling has finally left Clint feeling warm and lazy without the fog spinning in his head. He still has one hand resting high on Phil’s waist, solid under his fingers. He's a bit soft around the edges, Clint wonders if it's an age thing like the wrinkles around his eyes or just something else. He brushes a thumb over belly and squishes. Soft.

Phil jerks, grunting against Clint’s collarbone. “No tickling,” he mumbles.

He nibbles at the skin low on Clint’s neck, right where his shirt ends. 

“Big or little?” Phil asks. 

Clint blinks a few times, but he still can't make any sense of the question. 

“Spoon,” Phil clarifies.

When Clint doesn't answer right away, it's not out of any lingering confusion, he just really can't decide. Does he want to drape himself around Phil and engulf him, or does he want Phil to hold him close and tight and safe. They both sound too good to be real. But then, he guesses, it's not real, so he's kind of right. 

His thoughts must take too long, because Phil manhandles him and shifts into position behind him before long. He slots behind Clint easily, tangling their legs and fitting perfectly against him. It feels right, somehow.

“We should do this again,” Clint says. He tugs Phil’s arm tighter around his side. “Not just this, the whole night.”

Phil kisses along the bumps of his spine and onto his neck. Clint gets the idea that he agrees. 

\----

“I've talked to some people, I think I know where we can find what of Phil’s stuff was left here.” Natasha leads him through some winding hallways in SHIELD’s New York HQ as they talk. “It seems like most of his other stuff was sent to his family, though.”

“Makes sense.” Clint shrugs. If he had a normal family, he would have wanted that, too. 

“It's beginning to feel like very little does.” Natasha sounds, not peeved, but strained. Like it's difficult to consider the world differently to how she's gotten used to. 

A lull in conversation finally allows Clint to piece together where exactly their winding path is leading them. His step falters, minutely, but enough for her to notice. She doesn't ask, but she sends him a look. He waves a hand at his side, palm flat; he can do this. He’ll be fine. She doesn't need to worry. 

Phil's old office is unused now. Clint has no idea if it's some kind of respect for his memory or that the shoes were too big for anyone else to fill. It's a strange sight, though, his office being empty. It's been stripped of any signs of the life that was once there, devoid of anything _Phil_. 

"Is his stuff in here?" Clint asks, probably stupidly so. There's no reason they would use this space for storage. 

"No." Natasha unknowingly confirms his thoughts. "I was curious, I thought there would be... something."

There's nothing there, but it's not being used by anyone else either.

"It's like the world's shittiest memorial," Clint thinks aloud. "They won't use it because it was his, but they stripped everything of his out of it."

"Even his vintage posters and shelf decorations," Natasha agrees. 

"They were worth some money," Clint points out. "Maybe they sent them to his family, too?" The idea of those posters that he knows Phil had spent years collecting, restoring, preserving being sold off on eBay or in some garage sale makes his blood boil.

"We have somewhere else to check." 

Natasha leads him away from Phil's office and several floors away into a dimly lit storage room full of shelves upon shelves of dusty old boxes. Some of them look like they must be evidence boxes, taped up and labeled in detail. Others seem to be left behind junk from offices or ops or God knows what. They're all sealed with tape and stacked and, apparently, swiftly forgotten about. 

It's not hard to find what they're looking for thanks to the meticulous alphabetizing of the boxes. Coulson, Phillip J. Level 8 Senior Agent SKJ08U7342. 

Clint pulls the box from the shelf easily, careful to not rattle the contents around. Natasha creates a clean slice along each strip of tape, barely visible, and they lift away the dusty lid together. They pull the scraps and little belongings out of the box, creating neat piles inside the upturned lid on the floor. 

There are miscellaneous files with half filled reports in them that tug at Clint's heart oddly. Just another reminder that Phil had been having a pretty ordinary time at work before everything went down. He certainly hadn't stepped onto that helicarrier knowing he was going to die. None of his Captain America collectibles are in the box. Clint is thankful they aren't wasting away in the dust, but he hopes they're safe somewhere. 

"Holy shit," Clint whispers. He almost laughs from his shock. Natasha looks up from the open file she's reading, ready to flee if they need to. 

Instead, she finds Clint smiling and pulling a pair of glasses from inside the box. The same thick black glasses he recognizes from his dreams, the ones Phil wears at night in bed reading or when he pulls the newspaper open some mornings. 

"Glasses?" Natasha asks. "I never saw him wear them, did you?"

"No," Clint shakes his head. "I mean, not before these dreams, weird."

Natasha squints at the frames, taking and looking them over closely before setting them aside. Clint has to fight the urge to hide them away and take them home with him. 

There are a bunch of pens and stationery floating throughout the box, like the contents of Phil's desk drawers had been carelessly dumped into it. The topmost bright pink sticky note has the name and number for a nearby pizza place scribbled on it.

It takes some digging before they find anything else of note. The corner of something hard sticks out of another pile of papers, and he pulls it out: a framed picture of Phil, Clint, and Natasha. Clint remembers it very well from where it sat on one of Phil's many shelves in his office. The three of them are smiling, Natasha's red lips pressed together, Phil's smile stretched wider into his eyes, and Clint with a carefree wide grin. It's hard to believe, looking back, how happy he'd been then. They all look so much younger in the picture, fresh off an op together, dusty and tired, but happy. They'd celebrated together that night with a bunch of other agents who kept buying them all drinks for a job well done. Clint had gotten thoroughly smashed, not unusual after coming home successful. What was unusual was Phil that night, tie undone, loosened buttons, no signs of the serious agent mask he always wore. Just Phil, only just on the right side of tipsy, laughing at Clint without holding it in. 

"You should keep it," Natasha says, pulling him out of the memories. "You deserve it."

Clint traces a finger along the outside of the frame, unsure. He had always liked it. It's not something that should be crammed into a box and hidden away. He drops it onto his crossed legs and wonders where it will stand in his room. 

Natasha opens a file folder and finds it stuffed with clipped newspaper articles of all variety, origin, and language. From a few quick glances, they all seem to be from different ops that they had run or Phil had been involved in. Obviously they're not credited for the events reported, that would defeat the purpose, but Clint remembers most of them very well. He never knew Phil had kept mementos like that. 

"I remember this." Natasha flips a folded small page open. "Vietnam in August."

She grins at the pained face Clint makes, moving to shove the papers back into the folder and move on. When she straightens a few of the scraps out as to not wrinkle them, a very small, folded article slides out and flutters to the floor. 

Picking it up and gently unfolding it, Clint is on alert when her eyebrows furrow in confusion. 

"This is-" her head quirks to the side, pressing her lips together in thought. She flips the paper to check the back quickly; Clint sees a flash of a photo of Phil. "This is an obituary."

"Phillip J Coulson, 47, of Manitowoc, Wisconsin," she reads aloud. "Does that sound right?"

"That's not where we live, but he mentioned being born in Wisconsin?" Clint shrugs. "I guess it could be true, he never mentioned it to me before. Here, I mean."

"Survived by both parents, Phillip bravely served his country for many years and is a decorated Army Ranger veteran. Phillip died May 4, 2012, in New York City, one of many brave men and women lost while helping others during the attacks." Natasha trails off, eyes twitching from the paper back to Clint's. 

"I guess that was printed in his hometown paper," Clint says. "Is it weird that that makes it seem so... official?"

Natasha says nothing, squinting at the paper even harder. 

"Why would Coulson have a copy of his own obituary in his newspaper clippings?" she asks after a long moment of silent thought. 

The question lands heavy in Clint's gut. He hadn't even realized the exact oddity they were looking at right in front of their faces. Phil's personal collection of articles deemed important enough by him to keep surely shouldn't contain a scrap that he physically wasn't alive to clip and keep. It's easy to think that someone else had included it in there, adding Phil's final clipping to complete the story he had laid out in the file. The way everything else seems to have been dumped out of his desk and left, though, makes that pretty hard to believe. 

"Is there anything else in there?" Clint asks. He really wants to go process some of this information somewhere that doesn't smell of mildew and dust. 

Natasha rattles the box around, digging through the contents with fingertips. “Pens, empty memo pads, not a whole lot more in there.”

\--

Everything from the box in storage swirls inside Clint’s head back in his own apartment alone, Natasha gone with her own vague excuse. He hadn't gone into that storage room with any kind of expectations, but most of what they found made sense. It was all stuff that Phil would have held onto in his office, but nothing that could have been given to any family or close friends. (Other than him and Nat.)

Except for the obituary clipping.

“What the hell, Phil,” Clint mutters to the picture still held tight in his hand. 

Picture Phil smiles back up at him.

Clint drops the plastic frame onto his cheap bedside table with a clatter. He falls back against his pillows and rubs his hands over his face, palms digging into his eyes until his vision blanks out. 

The worst part about not being able to make sense of this newest development is there really isn’t an answer to be found anywhere. Sure, Bruce is doing his best to help him with his dreams, but that’s hard science. He’s no spy detective type who could track down why this would be possible. Clint and Nat can search and pester and ask, but most SHIELD agents don’t know any details about what happened to Phil, and Fury sure as hell isn’t going to give them any more answers.

It takes a moment for his eyes to readjust to the light when he finally pulls his hands away. He blinks against the fuzziness and tries to not let any of his frustration get to him. Maybe an hour or two on the range would be helpful. That zen headspace he can only find while shooting has helped him through tough situations before, and he hasn't been down there to shoot just for the hell of it in too long. 

Clint stands from his bed, methodically changing his clothes and gathering the equipment scattered around the room. He adjusts the bracer along his arm, but as he starts to head out of his door, the tossed aside picture catches his attention again. He stomps back to his nightstand and grabs the frame, planning to at least set it up straight before leaving. The frame is uneven along the back, something knocked out of place by how roughly it had been dropped before. It doesn’t click evenly into place when Clint presses against it, and when he picks it up properly to try again, it’s plain to see why. A folded piece of paper is pressed between the back of the frame and the glass, small enough to be hidden, but big enough to strain the cheap thin wood.

It takes a minute to break the paper free, Clint trying to jam his fat stupid fingers in the small opening to pull it out before he is forced to give up and take the frame apart properly.

It’s a personal property replacement request form with the SHIELD insignia letterhead, folded three times and pressed as flat as possible. Clint sits on the edge of his bed again as he finishes unfolding it. None of the blank spaces on the form are filled out, but when he flips the page over to the back, the reason quickly becomes apparent. At a quick glance, Phil must have been starting a handwritten letter on the back of the form. It’s not finished, not signed, and covered in scratched out sections of sentences, but definitely covered with Phil Coulson’s even handwriting. It’s odd, just another thing to add to the pile, he guesses. Phil was a man of a million legal pads, always a blank page nearby, and Clint had never seen him scratching things out roughly even during his most frustrated writing.

 _Agent Barton_ heads the page, scribbled over several times, but not heavily enough to become illegible. Immediately after the scribbles follows _Clint_. His heart races in his chest; he’s never seen this letter before, it’s not even dated. He swallows roughly and continues reading.

 _Don’t think that this assignment is punishment, you’re watching over some of the most important research that (heavy scribble marks) we have ever been witness to. Protecting Selvig is_ \- The sentence breaks off into even more scribbles broken up by random words, nothing enough to pull any meaning from. At least he knows roughly when this was written, though, before the tesseract.

 _They’re saying that the Captain should recover in a few more days. They’re also saying I should consider redecorating my office._ A laugh forces it’s way past the lump in Clint’s throat that he’s stubbornly pretending isn’t there. He remembers playing part of that, teasing that Phil’s vintage posters would scare the freshly unfrozen Captain America away. Of course, knowing Steve as he does now, he knows he would have been silently mortified but never actually said anything about it. 

_I’ll be overseeing the research as well, in person. We should_ \- These last two words are lightly lined over. _Would you like to_ \- Scratched out with a little more impatience, it looks like. _I know how much you love the desert._ It was all Clint had complained about when Thor had touched down. He’s from Iowa, not made for the desert heat. He hadn’t even thought Phil had been listening to him. _In some parts of the Mojave at night, you can see the next arm of the milky way above us. I’d like to_

That’s where it ends. He almost laughs again just at the cruelty of it. That can't be the end. He wants to grab the paper and wring it, like he can squeeze the rest of the words out if he tries hard enough. He can't bring himself to actually try it, though, for fear of destroying this last _real_ tie to Phil. To _his_ Coulson, the real one. His eyes are wet as he reads and rereads the disjointed letter what seems like another thousand times. He doesn't remember crying, but they're wet. 

\-----

Phil is still pressed close behind Clint when he wakes up, arm still draped over his side and holding tight. Clint can’t tell if he’s awake already or not. His breathing still sounds slow and relaxed behind him, puffing against his neck lightly. He’s hard, Clint realizes when he shifts in bed minutely, but in that lazy hazy morning way that he doesn’t seem to have noticed yet. Clint freezes at the realization, contemplating his next move. He can slide away to the safety of a shower, start breakfast, and they can go get Emily back, or he can move into it and engage.

The decision is made for him when Phil wakes and stretches all the way down to his fingers, spreading warmth across Clint’s stomach. It’s his own fault for being so slow to decide, but he finds that he doesn’t really mind all that much.

There are soft kisses at his neck interrupted by a wide, gasping yawn. Clint peeks over his shoulder, Phil’s eyes are still squeezed shut, like he could easily fall right back into his sleep. Clint would believe his eyes if Phil’s hips weren’t also pressed firmly against his own.

“Murnin’,” Phil mumbles. One eye peeks open, bleary and squinting against the dim light of the sun beaming through the window blinds. 

It makes Clint laugh, this twilight zone Phil looking sleepy and lazy, completely comfortable to not be fully alert the second his eyes open.

Phil cranes his neck to press another kiss against the side of Clint’s mouth. “Don’t laugh,” he scolds.

Clint half rolls, half is rolled by Phil onto his back, giving him the space to press even closer to his side. Phil nuzzles into Clint’s neck, no urgency in his hands, the small movements of his hips. 

“When should we be at Nat’s?” Clint finally breaks his silence. He somehow sounds just as lazy tired as Phil had. He can tell without even checking that his hair is standing up all over. 

Phil lifts himself on an elbow to peek at the clock at his table. It's still pretty damn early. “They're not even awake yet,” Phil says. “No rush.”

At some point, Clint's hands must have found their way around Phil’s middle, holding onto him and encouraging the press of Phil’s erection against his thigh. He lets himself get lost in the movements and the kisses that follow, falling into it until he's just as hard against Phil’s thigh. Through it all, the letter plays on loop in his mind in the background. It's not helpful to hunt for meaning and intent in the unfinished words, especially not inside his own dreams. Of course he knows that, but it seemed like almost, _maybe_ , Phil had been building up asking him into something other than dinner as friends. And that line about the stars...

He has to ask, just out of pure curiosity. “Hey.” He pulls away from another kiss. “Have you ever-” He stops to hum his approval of the thumb pressing into the groove of his hipbone, under his waistband.

Phil crooks an eyebrow in question. He doesn't pull his thumb away but encourages him silently to continue his thought. 

"Have you ever been to the Mojave?" Clint manages to force out all in one go. 

Phil tilts his head at Clint. Not necessarily shocked by the question, but definitely looking like it was not what he expected it to be. He recovers gracefully, his thumb continues massaging in that spot on Clint's hip, thoughtless.

"My parents took me to the Grand Canyon once," Phil replies after thinking for a moment. "I was too young to really remember it though. Why?"

Clint shrugs to the best of his ability while lying on his back with Phil draped over most of his body. 

“I've heard that in some parts of the desert, at night, the next arm of the Milky Way is visible,” Phil says almost word for word to the letter. “I'd like to see that one day, with you. With Emily.”

He can't drag a breath into his stubborn straining lungs to respond to Phil. He can't think of words to say that won't lead to him crying again, and it's way too early for that embarrassment quite yet.

Instead of struggling and stuttering through some half choked response, he tightens his grip around Phil’s waist to roll them both. With Phil pinned beneath his hips, Clint ruts, letting the rough grind of his hips play as a distraction from any more talking, questions, thoughtful looks. It works, Phil’s eyes close and he groans, quiet until he remembers he doesn’t need to be. This time around, Clint is more present and aware of himself as he holds Phil and presses close. As he strips away the layers of his pajamas. As he takes all of Phil in, through the pleasant aching stretch and the glazed over looks. This time there’s no overwhelming out of body experience for Clint. He’s there to see and feel every minute of it, watching Phil come undone beneath him.

After, there are hot showers and a full breakfast, not the fast and hot oatmeal or coffee Clint has gotten used to. Eggs with toast and bacon, the hint of a serene smile on Phil’s face, pleasant nudges of his slippers against Clint’s ankles under the table. 

When they go to pick up Emily from Nat’s cozy little apartment, the little girl looks surprisingly happy to see them again. The smile on her face when Phil picks her up and mushes his face into her belly is probably one of the cutest things Clint has ever seen. The knowing smile on Natasha’s face is a little too much to handle, though. He resists the urge to awkwardly clear his throat and turns to pack all of her things into the diaper bag instead. He has an armful of baby in the next instant, surprising him into holding her tight. She smiles up at him, too, hands gripping the front of his jacket.

“Hi,” he breathes out at her. There’s a sappy smile on his face, he can feel it, he must look like Phil does when he looks at her. Not a clue when he started looking at her like that too. 

They get back home and the apartment is filled again with the noises of Emily’s squeaking, chirping, jingling toys and her excited giggles and screams and gurgles. Strangely, Clint finds that part of him missed it. The apartment had felt empty without the sound of her. 

\-----

When Clint wakes up in New York, he grabs the StarkPad abandoned under his bed immediately. It was a gift that he’s never had much use for, and mostly ignored. He finds a book store in the city, close enough to walk to yet far enough to be private from the tower, and reserves a long list of books. 

It’s been three weeks of family life with Phil with no signs of stopping and no hints to a solution from what research they have done. If he’s going to play father, there’s no reason to do a half-assed job at it anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol ps guess who wrote 3000 words of an entirely new au while working on this chapter too? this guy


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint explores his life and considers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost at a year since this fic was a funny little idea with a timeline mapped out on scrap paper at my evening shift gas station job. We're getting close to the end!
> 
> so sososo os so sorry for taking an eternity to update, things have been very busy and stressful, but things are going well and I'm adapting to the changes I've been making. One thing to count on: I won't let this live in limbo, I will finish it. I know exactly where we're going & honestly I've known since that evening shift a year ago. 
> 
> It's not necessary, but there is a little side piece to the story that gets mentioned this chapter, kind of a [chapter 7.5](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8191435) or something. It's brief, but it's there!

"Did you know that babies are born with all of their teeth already crammed into their skull?” Clint asks Phil absentmindedly. His attention is on Emily, handing her soft chewy puffs to watch her grab them and get excited when she gets it into her mouth on her own.

Phil is stationed next to the stove, chopping lettuce into thin pieces while a pan of chicken cooks loudly. Apparently, Phil is a huge fan of quesadillas, who knew. 

“You should see a picture of a baby x-ray,” Phil says. “Terrifying.”

Using one hand to let Emily continue to pick puffs from and one to grab his phone, Clint googles. “Holy hell,” he exclaims when the photos finally load. “That looks like something from a horror movie.”

Phil laughs openly through a mouthful of tortilla chip and salsa. He dips a second chip into the salsa and feeds it to Clint who accepts it happily. The whole kitchen smells amazing, spices and salsa and cheese, and the cooking has hardly even started yet.

“I’m really going to miss this tomorrow,” Phil says. “Can’t wait for this semester to end.”

Brow furrowed, Clint shifts in his seat. “Is it a bad one?” he asks.

With a wave of his hand, Phil rejects that as the reason. “It’s fine, pretty typical, really. I just-“ he shrugs. “It feels like I’m missing so much here sometimes.”

“It does seem like she changes every day,” Clint agrees. Even though the books he's been reading all say it's normal, it seems so fast. One day she's a tiny human blob and the next she's learning that she can wiggle her tongue, make noises, stick her toes in her mouth. 

Phil hums and nods with another mouthful of crunchy tortilla chip.

“You're usually back by the afternoon, though,” Clint says. “So I have to miss messy dinnertime most days.”

“Oh, I'm sure you really hate that.” Phil laughs and flips his cooked chicken onto a plate.

“Hey.” Clint points at Phil. “I'm the one who has to clean oatmeal out of her hair every morning.”

“I had to clean peas out of her eyelashes.” Phil’s voice is almost too even. So this is the game he wants to play. 

“She peed on my shirt last week and I had to keep holding her.” It probably hadn’t been the prettiest moment he’s ever had, but it certainly wasn’t his ugliest either, come to think of it. 

Phil turns off the burner and rearranges some of the ingredients around the countertop space. His shoulders shake just once in his effort to not laugh. “One time she pooped through her diaper and on my hand.” Phil’s face is completely even, dead serious in his delivery. “I think I washed my hands thirty times even after her emergency bath.”

Clint tries. He really, really tries to keep a straight face, already thinking of something to top that, but he breaks it. “That's so gross,” he says as he snickers into the table. “Did she really?”

“Yes!” Phil is laughing, too. “Halfway up my arm!”

Clint cackles at the thought of cool collected Phil, soft maroon sweaters Phil, silently freaking out with baby poop across his arm. He has to wipe a tear out of his eye, but it proves useless when he looks up again to see Emily smiling along with him, like she’s proud of herself, and it sets him off onto another round of laughter.

“You win, that’s disgusting.” Clint forfeits, hands up.

Phil sets the plated chicken in front of Clint on the table, far enough away from Emily’s already reaching hands. He turns, then, and lifts her easily from her chair. 

“Shred that, please?” Phil directs at Clint. “I’m going to change Miss Poopy and get her ready for dinner too.”

Clint is sure that his laughter follows Phil as he walks away, he can just barely see his smile when he leaves the kitchen. “Don’t call our baby Miss Poopy!” he shouts after him, smiling again when he hears Phil snort from the living room.

He’s halfway through shredding the first piece of chicken before it hits him what he’d said without even thinking. _Our baby_. It just slipped right out of him.

There’s that instinct again, that sudden panic boiling inside him followed by that voice telling him to run as far away as possible. It seems so long since that day he’d given into that voice and fled, hiding in the snowy park and freezing his ass off in the car. Phil was so mad, even more than what he’d shown at the time. Even Natasha had looked like she wanted to tear him to shreds.

He doesn’t run. He doesn’t move. 

Phil reenters the kitchen with a freshly bibbed baby, still smiling. Clint tries to convincingly return the look and ignore the shaking in his hands as he continues to shred chicken.

\--

Phil abandons his half of the bed tonight to sleep close against Clint. It happens sometimes, from what Clint has found in the weeks since he's been here, but not too often. Clint rolls too much and Phil likes his space, but it's nice when it does.

The routine is starting again in the morning. Phil will be back at school and Clint will be alone until the afternoons again. 

Phil spent most of the evening a little extra cuddly, actually. Seemingly dreading the return to routine. He even whined when he'd set his alarm before getting into bed. 

“How many more weeks?” Clint asks. 

“Eight,” Phil mumbles into the back of Clint’s shoulder. “Then finals, then grading.”

Eight weeks, that would take them all the way to the middle of May. That would make three whole months of Clint living like this. He really, really hopes they have some answers before then. 

By the time he thinks to respond, Phil is already sleeping. 

\----

“How are you doing?” Natasha steps away from the far wall of the gallery where she’d been lurking in the shadows. Clint had known she was there, but didn’t call her out. Sometimes she needs that, sometimes she just needs to watch and make sure everything is right.

Clint has been shooting for most of the early afternoon; he hasn’t actually kept track of the time, but the burn in his shoulders and the sweat soaking through his shirt is enough to tell him it's time for a break. He accepts a fresh water bottle from Nat with a thanks. 

“As good as I can be, I guess,” Clint finally replies. “Still clueless, still dreaming, still stressed.”

“How’s Phil?” she asks then. Everything about her is casual, from her voice to her posture, but the question strikes so odd.

He looks at her for a long time before answering. “Phil’s fine.” He doesn’t elaborate. It’s too unclear what motivations drive the question, and giving away too much would be stupid. She doesn’t need to know that he’s dreading his next day back there, not because of the strangeness of the entire thing, that’s old news by now, but because Phil will be back at work and he’s going to miss him.

“And the baby? Emily?” she continues, still casual, like she’s asking about old friends and not something either imaginary or the product of some yet undiscovered mental breakdown.

“Why are you asking about them?” Clint asks. He isn’t aiming for the blunt tone that comes from him, but Natasha doesn’t flinch.

She blinks at him once. “I don’t know, curiosity?”

“What’s to be curious about?” Clint asks. “It’s not like it’s real. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it matters,” she says. “It may not be real, but it’s part of your life right now.”

Clint grabs a seat and begins to methodically strip away the layers of his gear, one by one, finally collapsing his bow and neatly storing it away. The rest of his life may be a mess, and okay, maybe he repeatedly loses just his left shoe in his apartment, but his bow is one thing he makes sure to give the respect it deserves. Natasha watches him the entire time, still as a statue.

“It feels real, doesn’t it?” she picks up after being silent for long enough that Clint had begun to hope she’d given up. “You said before that it does.”

The laugh that breaks out of Clint sounds a lot less pathetic than he feels. He leans back on the bench he’d grabbed a seat on to better look at Natasha, but changes and looks past her instead. It’s easier that way.

“Sometimes it feels so real I forget that it’s not,” he admits. “Sometimes it feels so real that while I’m there, this place feels like the dream instead. Is that crazy?”

Natasha shakes her head in response. “I don’t think that’s crazy,” she says. “I think it should be expected.”

When Clint blinks up at her in surprise, he can tell she’s a moment away from a truly crippling eyeroll aimed right for him. 

“You’ve been living two fully fleshed out lives, Clint, anyone would struggle with blurring those lines.” She speaks as if this is the most obvious thing. Maybe it is, maybe Clint is the only one struggling to realize it. “By the sounds of it, that life is much more normal than this one. Most people our age are settled down with families, not flying around the world playing superhero.“

“That life… That has never been my normal,” Clint says. He accepted a long time ago that he hadn’t had anything even resembling a normal childhood. He hasn’t had a normal adulthood either, though he much prefers it to the past.

“Yeah, well-” Natasha shrugs like it doesn’t bother her. Clint knows sometimes it does. “It hasn’t been mine either. I still don’t think it’s crazy to maybe get a little mixed up. At the end of the day, you know the truth.”

He nods, another massive gulp of cold water in his cheeks. He knows this is his reality, as strange and unpredictable as it is. Sometimes, though, he thinks maybe not, maybe he is some boring, married, new father having dreams of being this secret agent turned alien fighting hero type.

“Are you gonna tell Bruce?” Clint asks. It takes him back to being a kid again, begging Barney to not tell Dad about whatever latest thing he knew would piss him off; report cards, something broken, the boy in his math class he had a crush on. 

Natasha breaks him away from his thoughts. “Tell Bruce what?” she asks.

“That I’m off my rocker,” Clint elaborates. “Losing touch on reality, whatever.”

“Do you want me to tell Bruce?” she asks genuinely.

Clint considers for a moment. Tell Bruce he’s losing touch on reality, undergo even more tests, exams, scrutiny, invasive questions. Run the risk of looking even crazier than he already does. Run the risk of even more people finding out, and then what? Kicked from the team? It’s not exactly a safe decision to fight side by side with a guy who might think this is a dream, but Clint doesn’t need to be benched, he knows. Don’t tell him, though, and he’s as good as lying to a friend who only wants to help, who has only ever been kind since they’ve known each other.

“No,” he finally answers. Maybe it's not the right thing to do, but he doesn't want or need to be sidelined right now. 

Natasha nods once. “Then I won't tell him.”

Clint doesn't sigh in relief, but it's a close call. He knows he can trust Natasha to stay true to her word, but he also knows that the instant he does become a risk to himself or the team, she won’t hesitate to shut him down. He would do the same thing for her in a heartbeat, if she was in his position.

“Thanks, Tash,” he says.

She smirks at him in such an annoying, knowing way. On anyone else’s face, it would bother him. “Lunch is in 40.” She turns to leave, abandoning him in the dim shooting range. “Shower before then, you reek,” she calls over her shoulder before she vanishes.

\----

The sound of wailing through the static of a tinny radio receiver rips Clint from his sleep very suddenly. He wobbles into an upright position in bed, still delirious for another moment before he remembers the source of the crying is his responsibility once again. Phil’s side of the bed is already empty

When Clint opens the door, Emily is stood in her crib, clutching the bars with fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Clint coos. Her big, wet eyes turn to him when he speaks, bottom lip poking out and quivering in a way that tugs roughly at Clint’s heartstrings. She buries her face into his t-shirt when he picks her up, still huffing and sniffling somewhat. “What’s all this noise about, huh?” 

He’d thought, before, that there wasn’t much reason to talk to her at this age. Everything in his books had said that it was actually very important in their early socialization. He tries, even though it often feels silly. He wipes her runny nose with the front of his shirt, making a face when it comes away even runnier. 

Most mornings, the baby will go into her playpen or bouncy chair while Clint or Phil put her breakfast together, perfectly happy to play with toys until they’re ready for her again. This morning, she clings to Clint’s shirt with tiny fists when he bends to sit her down, so it looks more like he’s going to be doing it all one handed. She doesn’t lift her head up from his shoulder the entire time Clint mixes and warms a fresh bottle for her; he makes a mental note to find out it babies are comforted by familiar smells. He can remember being a kid, the way his mom smelled, so unique and comforting and identifiable that he could tell when she came into a room without looking sometimes. Maybe that starts in infancy.

Settling into the soft, comfortable chair with Emily still pressed against his chest is easy, it’s familiar. She takes her bottle greedily, and her mood seems to improve as she eats as well. She burps and settles back against Clint’s chest, seeming to doze contentedly back into sleep.

A phone buzzing jolts Clint out of the half doze he must have fallen into, tugged down by Emily breathing warmly on his chest. 

He unearths his cell phone from the chair cushion, trying to not move enough to anger any grumpy babies. A message from Phil lights up on his screen.

**I know you hate waking up alone, but I didn’t think we both deserved the punishment of my early morning.**

Clint laughs before he can stop himself. It’s true that he’s never been a morning person. In the field he can be awake and alert in seconds, though the help of coffee is still very much appreciated when such a luxury can be afforded. At home? He’s heard multiple times from different sources that he snores like a log, is impossible to pull from his sleep, and occasionally comes around speaking the wrong language. 

**Can’t fault your logic** is Clint’s short response.

When there are still no dots indicating an incoming response a moment later, Clint closes away his messages to instead open his camera. He snaps a quick and somewhat crooked shot of Emily sleeping on him, only managing to get part of his chin included in the shot. The photo is attached and sent before Clint can allow time to doubt himself.

**I think someone misses you today.**

Phil replies with a row of crying faces and **I miss her too.**

\--

Emily wakes up significantly less grumpy, which comes as a relief. After breakfast and diaper changes and then lunch, Clint packs up a hefty bag full of diapers and baby friendly snacks. It takes him a significant amount of time to figure out how to work the baby stroller that has been stuffed away in the closet, probably stored away for the cold winter.

The sun has finally started to appear throughout the slowly lengthening days, bringing and keeping the temperature comfortably above freezing. The air is still brisk, but no longer uncomfortable, and Clint has been wanting to take Emily to the park. His books suggest that babies can socialize with each other even before they’re babbling to adults. Natasha suggests that he throw the books out and stop following them word for word.

They only make it to the end of the block before Clint gets nervous that Emily will be too cold, that people will think he’s a bad parent for taking a small baby outside in this weather. The trip to the park quickly becomes a trip around the block and back inside the warmth of their fancy apartment complex.

Emily seems completely unbothered by the entire string of events start to finish. She babbles and makes content noises as Clint removes her outerwear, crawling rapidly away on the soft carpeted floor as soon as she’s free again. 

\--

It’s already getting dark when Phil returns home, on time enough for dinner and not much else before Clint needs to head out again for his archery class that will finally resume after the standard school vacation.

He and Emily greet each other gleefully, happy drool falling from her mouth when Phil lifts her above his head. 

“I missed you so much!” he tells the little girl only to be answered, surprisingly, with even more drool.

Phil aligns himself to Clint’s side, baby mushed warmly between the two of them, and drops his forehead onto Clint’s shoulder. “Missed you, too,” he adds.

He doesn’t move for a long enough time that even Emily seems confused. Clint begins to worry that he’s fallen asleep standing right there in the living room. 

“Cancel your class again,” Phil whines. He sounds like a child throwing a fit and it’s wonderful. Clint wants to set it as his ringtone, alarm tone, everything.

“It was cancelled the whole time you were home.” Clint allows himself another moment to stand in the warmth of Phil being close to him, warm and solid with the slight chill of the air still clinging to his outermost layers of clothing, then he has to pull away. 

Phil whines again, but allows him to move away. They have dinner and Phil makes coffee with a wide yawn, beat up from the first early morning in over a week. He expresses his dissatisfaction at Clint leaving him for the next hour and some no less than three times while they eat.

Clint find himself kind of oddly looking forward to going back to class. It’s a good group of kids all eager to learn from him. For whatever weird reason, they seem to really like him. Of course there are kids in reality who like him, too. They think he’s a superhero or something, but they don’t actually know anything about him; he almost never gets recognized in the streets. 

A light jacket and his bow is all the preparation needed before class. Clint has to rush out the door while Phil gives Emily her bath. He stops once he gets in the car, guilty that he didn’t even stop to say bye. **You can fall asleep on me later**

The responding message lights up his screen before he’s even exited the garage.

**Promise?**

\----

Things in reality are getting wildly, strangely, _annoyingly_ busy. Steve makes the announcement one morning that finds them all in a room together that he’s found a place, all the way in Washington DC. It’s no stretch of the imagination to suggest that Tony does not take the news very well. 

SHIELD is up to something as well, though there’s no word on what it is. Clint and Natasha should both be more informed than they are, both of them being level 7. Well, they were, anyway. After the Avengers came around, both of their involvement in his normal SHIELD work seems to have diminished dramatically. SHIELD has always had secrets, even from its own employees, there are probably things happening in SHIELD that even Fury doesn’t know about, but being cut off as they’ve been seems cold.

There’s been a rash of crime breaking out locally, a small string of mysterious store robberies. No one has been hurt yet, but the NYPD know when they’ve been outsmarted, and they know that Tony Stark will have the tech needed to help them. 

As a result, Clint hasn’t been to see Bruce for an unusually long time. Not that there’s been a whole lot of brand new information he’s been desperate to share or write down, and he’s still not sure he wants Bruce to think he’s disconnecting from reality or to know he’s starting to get used to that second life. He is interested in any new scientific updates from the doctor’s side of things, however, and they still haven’t had the chance to do the overnight brain scan that Bruce had seemed so interested in. 

\----

On the second day of waking up alone (the half delirious good morning greeting definitely doesn’t count) Clint only makes it an hour past breakfast before he’s too bored to carry on. He tries to play on his phone while Emily naps, tries to entertain them both with her toys when she wakes up, nothing works.

**How’s work?** He sends to Phil.

The response scrolls in quickly.

**Busy.**

At first, he takes the response in the way the agent may have used it. That is, _I’m busy, leave me alone_. Then a second text appears.

**So much grading, not enough coffee in the world.**

Clint snorts.

\--

It doesn’t take very long to gather some things for lunch together and into a bag, Emily’s diaper bag is still packed up from the recent aborted walk to the park. Together they get properly dressed and into the car, Emily fussing in her backward facing seat until Clint plays the little mobile above her. It distracts her enough to let him start his GPS, taking him to the building that, according to the university site, should hold Phil’s office.

The buildings on campus are wide and confusing; some of them look ancient and beautiful while some are hyper modern, all sharp angles and wide windows. Every inch of sidewalk seems to be crawling with young people, some walking with their faces buried in books and some laughing and joking in a group of friends. It’s all brand new to Clint. He’s been around college campuses before, but never during academic hours. Usually back when he was a wild teen looking for a place to run away from the carnival for a night to get hammered or laid or both.

Finding a parking space and locating Phil’s specific building isn’t as difficult as Clint had anticipated it being, and there should still be time to surprise Phil with lunch before he has to go back to class. He verbally reminds himself no less than six times that Emily is in the rear seat as he drives through the parking garage. He isn’t a very forgetful person, but he is a habitual one, and remembering to pull a baby out of its car seat is not a habit he has yet formed.

There’s a moment of shock when Phil’s name is on the building directory when he walks in, Emily watching the students bustling silently through the doors behind them. It’s not like he wasn’t expecting Phil to really be there, but that plaque takes things out of their apartment and into the world, it’s more real.

“Clint?” An unfamiliar woman’s voice speaks up from behind him. The woman gasps as he turns to look at her. “Oh my god, there she is.”

A well dressed woman, obviously not a student, has eyes on Emily only as she approaches Clint where he stands dumbly. 

“Look how big she’s getting!” The woman tickles a finger under Emily’s chin and across a cheek “Are you here to see Phil?”

Clint nods and gestures toward the overstuffed baby bag. “I brought lunch.”

The woman looks downright tickled at the prospect of a surprise visit and gestures for him to go along with her. He’s thankful for that, at the very least. He won’t have to get lost looking for Phil’s specific office and look like a bad husband.

She stops just ahead of Clint and raps on an open door. “Dr. Coulson?” So, so odd. Phil never used to leave his office door wide open. “Someone is here to see you.”

“Really? I didn’t-” Phil’s face shifts instantly from confused to relaxed and pleased when Clint takes a sidestep to be visible behind the unknown woman. “Thank you.”

She leaves them with one last wave to Emily who couldn’t possibly care any less than does, not when she sees her dad standing right there. Already she has one hand reaching out toward him. She hasn’t quite mastered pointing yet, but she’s getting closer. 

Phil shuts his office door behind them. “What’s going on?” He finally gives in to Emily’s desires and takes her from Clint, making her smile her tri-toothed grin at him.

“I brought lunch,” Clint explains while heading toward a clear chair in front of Phil’s desk. “You aren’t too busy, are you? I should have asked-”

“No,” Phil interrupts before Clint can go crazy with self doubt. “No, this is exactly what I needed today.” 

Clint hides his smile in the bag, digging to pull out the sandwiches he’d made, only a little bit misshapen now. Phil moves papers and notebooks away from the center of his desk, clearing a space for them to both eat.

When Clint sits finally in the old looking chair, Phil leans to plant a firm kiss on his lips, Emily clutched to his chest. “Thank you,” Phil says. 

“Bad day?” Clint unwraps two sandwiches and places them onto the desk.

Phil frees Emily from her cap and light jacket. He grunts in acknowledgement of Clint’s question. “Busy day. No one wants to work during the semester and everyone wants extra credit at the end.”

It sounds frustrating, though Clint wouldn’t know -- his classes don’t come with passing or failing grades. Phil’s office looks like a busy one, almost like a professor on a TV show. It’s a decent size, but crowded with shelves stuffed with books, papers, and at least two laptops that Clint can see. Coulson’s office in HQ was meticulous in every way. Papers were specifically filed away in their individual folders, labeled, and locked into their cabinets where they would stay untouched. 

The food quickly vanishes, but Phil asks them to stay until he’ll be late for his own class if they stay any longer. Clint has to remind him three times that he’ll be home in a few short hours before he’ll let Emily go. Even then, he lets go only after stealing several kisses from the both of them. 

Clint never would have expected Phil to be such a sucker for a nice surprise, it wasn’t something he’d ever tried before. 

\----

They have a going away party for Steve at the insistence of Tony, although everyone agrees pretty readily to the idea. It’s going to be strange without him in the tower. He’s so often the mediator amid the craziness that comes in and out of their days and a great leader besides. He’s assured them that he’ll still be involved with team exercises, but wants some time to himself for a while. Clint can’t blame the guy for wanting to get out there, outside of their little bubble and live life just as Steve Rogers again without needed to be **Captain** morning to night. 

Clint had already grabbed a pile of snacks and desserts onto his plate and moved to a comfortable seat on the best couch. Team bonding is great, grabbing the best spot before anyone else is even better.

Steve grabs a seat on the nearby sofa with his own plate of food and what looks like a mimosa in his other hand. He slouches into the back cushion comfortably.

“Sorry if we were prying, the other week,” he says. “I know it’s not really our business.”

Clint shrugs good naturedly, he can’t bring himself to be annoyed at the captain. “It didn’t bother me, it was just a book.”

“You know how Tony is once he gets an idea in his mind.”

Everyone knows that’s the truth; even people who aren’t living in the tower with the man every day know that. Thinking about it, it may have a lot to do with why Clint has been working so hard to avoid him, especially with all the time he’s been spending around the labs. There’s that fear that Tony can practically read minds with how good he is at reading people, that he would recognize something in Clint and somehow know immediately.

“So …” Steve trails off, uncharacteristically awkward. “You and Natasha aren’t … ?” He finishes with a vague gesture of his hands. 

Clint laughs, not mocking. “God, no, not by a long shot.”

It might be a trick of the light, but Steve looks genuinely surprised to hear that. Clint knows people assume things about he and Natasha, that’s hardly a new thing, but to have someone seem almost disappointed to find out they’re wrong is an entirely new thing.

“Sorry, I assumed,” Steve begins.

“Don’t worry about it,” Clint interrupts before Steve can get started. “You’re not the first person who has, won’t be the last.”

“You two seem awful close, is all.” Steve is sheepish, looking far too embarrassed for a man of his size.

Clint swings his feet up onto the couch, making himself comfortable with a pillow against his back. “I was recruited when I was 21…..2? Something around there. A few years after that, Coulson and I were sent to eliminate a threat, we recruited her instead.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up. “And that was okay?” 

It's easy to forget that Steve was military, actually working out on the frontlines. He would know the weight of disobeying an order like that. 

“Hell no!” Clint laughs at the memory, he can now that it’s safely in the distant past. “I think Coulson being involved was the only thing that stopped Fury from skinning me alive in his office.”

Steve laughs, a short puff of breath through his nose. 

“People always assumed it was attraction or whatever.” Clint rolls his eyes. “It was just the right thing to do.”

There’s an odd little smile on Steve’s face, unlike any Clint has seen him bear before. He nods a few times, half to himself. “I used to get into a lot of trouble like that, fighting for the right thing.”

Clint has heard the stories, read the books, he knows about little Brooklyn kid Steve Rogers, getting into scrapes with the other boys for being jerks. He doesn’t see himself as the same, not really, he’s not driven by an overwhelming sense of justice the way the Steve in those stories was. He’s not genuinely a good person, through and through, like Steve still is now.

“Seems a lot like you still are,” Clint suggests. 

A proper smile breaks onto Steve’s face, then, he nods again. “I guess I am, huh.”

“Anyway, no,” Clint begins. “Natasha is my best friend, beautiful, but women aren’t exactly my thing.”

The words are out of his mouth before he can consider them. He’s not ashamed of himself, he’s refused to be since he was young, something that Barney could never handle, and it’s not some great secret even if he doesn’t run screaming it from the rooftops, but this is Steve. This is Captain America. Not only is he from a pretty unaccepting time in history, he’s the quintessential good ol’ American boy. The surprise on his face says it all, this is going to change things. 

“That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” Clint asks, already on the defensive, but trying to play casual.

Steve’s eyes go even wider than before, and Clint is almost ready to stand up and leave when he starts frantically waving his hands.

“No! No, oh my god, no.” It all falls out of Steve in an exclaimed rush. “It’s just… Unexpected, I guess.”

Clint settles back into his seat with a wary eye still on Steve.

“People are so, uh-” There’s pink tinging his cheeks, for god’s sake. “Open, these days.”

“I guess it is a lot to get used to…”

Steve nods earnestly at Clint with a look that screams ‘you have no idea’.

“It would be pretty hypocritical of me.” Steve’s voice loses some of the confidence that is always present, his eye contact falters. “If I had a problem with you because of- that.”

It takes a second before the words really make the connection in Clint’s brain, still coming down from that jolt of ‘oh shit, time to flee.’ Then they do sink in very suddenly.

“No shit.” The surprise seems to have collapsed the brain to mouth filters inside his head, at least Steve looks somewhat amused, though.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I haven’t, um. I haven’t actually ever really told anyone before.”

“Wow.” It’s all Clint can think to say. Besides Natasha, he’s never been someone that people choose to confide in. “Oh, man, Phil would’ve lost his mind if he knew.”

“Agent Coulson?” Steve seems confused by the thought. Clint remembers belatedly that Steve had hardly known Coulson. To him, he was just one of the many agents who died in New York, he probably has hardly thought about him since.

“Yeah, you were kind of his hero, you know?” Clint fights a smile when Steve looks bashful again. “He would've loved to know you would’ve accepted him.”

“He was…” Steve quickly connects his line of thought to the next. “Were you two…?”

“No,” Clint answers simply. “We would have been? But not yet, no.” Saying it doesn’t come with the pain it would have done two months ago, not when he knows he’ll be seeing Phil again in just a few hours.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Clint has never seen someone mean those words in this context so honestly before. He remembers when his parents died, he remembers when he got kicked out of the circus, people told him they were sorry for those things, but they never really meant it.

“That’s life, I guess, isn’t it?” Maybe it’s not the happiest sentiment, but Clint is kind of used to life taking away from him.

Steve laughs a short, bitter laugh. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“I actually dream about him a lot, you know?” It almost makes him laugh at himself, how Steve could never guess what he really means by that.

“Do you?” The distant look in Steve’s eyes wipes any smile from Clint’s face. “Yeah, I guess I dream about- Well, it’s so often nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” He can vaguely remember Steve mentioning nightmares before. He’d assumed it was stuff from war, aliens, Loki.

“He fell, during the war.” Steve still looks so far off. “From a train. I wasn’t fast enough, I watched him go.”

Something about the story tugs at a memory in Clint’s mind, something distantly familiar about it. “You were together during the war?”

Steve nods. His eyes snap back to the present, looking at Clint again. “It’s barely been a couple years to me, but to everyone else, Bucky’s been dead for a lifetime.”

Oh. Oh, shit. “Bucky? You and Bucky Barnes?” He tries, honestly, to not sound as surprised as he is, but it’s hard. 

“Yep.” Steve’s smile is tinged with sadness, but he doesn’t seem to be struggling to talk about it. No one else in the room is paying them any mind. “Since we were 19, 20? He was 25 when he shipped out, I followed him a year later, he didn’t make it to 28.”

“Shit.” Clint can’t imagine the pain of that, being that young and watching that happen. Being here, having still not even hit 30, and knowing that every person you once considered a friend is dead. “I’m sorry, man, I can’t even imagine.”

“It’s been hard.” Steve speaks from a place of so much experience, despite his young age. “For both of us. It kind of feels good to finally tell someone, though, thanks.”

“No, anytime, wow.” Clint sits up from his slightly slouched position. “If it means anything to you, you just pissed off a lot of historians who like to hold you to a certain outdated image.”

Steve’s laugh is genuinely entertained. “That’s not so bad to think about, actually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our little baby bird is growing up so much.
> 
> I don't know what it is, but Clint & Steve awkwardly coming out to each other was one of my favorite things to write.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint tries hard to get some answers he isn't sure he wants, the world conspires against letting that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9 my friends! we're really closing in! For as short as this is, there's no excuse for it taking as long as it has. If you're still around, still reading, still waiting for updates, you have all my love!

The weekend comes for Phil and Clint, the first after a long first week back to work for the both of them. Phil sleeps well into the morning on Saturday and Clint allows him his extra few hours of laziness without complaint. Emily spends the time crawling around on the floor with glee, moving between her toys, Clint, and wobbling on unsteady legs with the coffee table for support.

Clint lounges and waits to discover what mystery mousekatool will save the day this time around. 

One creaky floorboard is the only sign that Phil has finally gotten out of bed. He's stretching out his back, arms high, at the end of the hall when Clint peeks over toward him. His shirt is crooked and a peek of hip bone emerges from the hem for just a moment. Clint had never expected to be 40 something and still so absurdly attracted to a person, something so minor as a hip bone. Well, here he is. 

Emily scrambles over to Phil, hands slapping loudly on the flooring and smiling all the way. She gurgles and babbles when he picks her up and nuzzles his face into her belly. 

Phil welcomes himself to a drink of Clint’s coffee, grimacing when he discovers it's barely lukewarm. 

“Any plans for the day?” He nudges Clint’s foot with his own. 

Clint tries desperately to remember if there are plans. If there's a reason he should have plans. The look on his face must say it all, because Phil tuts at him and sighs. 

“It’s March 22nd,” Phil says it like it should be an obvious hint. Then, when Clint remains silent, “Come on, Clint, it’s not _that_ early.”

A series of realizations play rapidly through Clint’s mind. 

He remembers the planner he’d found when he started finding himself here, the one he’s neglected to open for weeks since it stopped providing any new or useful information to him. He remembers the first date he’d seen significantly marked, just a few days after he’d arrived: February 22, Emily 8 months.

Two thoughts strike him at almost the exact same time. Emily is nine months old today, and he’s been living two lives for over a month with no answers in sight. 

“You forgot!” Phil accuses, but there’s no actual heat to the anger.

“No!” Clint argues. “I just- It doesn’t feel an entire month has passed already…” He feels a near irresistible urge to check a calendar, that planner, his phone date. Hell, he might run to check all three just to be sure and verify the date. 

Phil’s eyes go a bit softer. “No, you’re right. You, young lady, stop growing.” He holds Emily out in front of himself, but his scolding goes entirely ignored by her.

It wasn’t exactly what Clint had been referencing, but the sentiment is more or less the same. Where did that time go? How could it have gone so fast? He reaches up to poke at her foot hanging near Phil’s hip, making her kick out at nothing and laugh.

“Well,” Clint says with a little sigh behind it. “I guess we should do something special, then.”

Phil smiles at him, willing to completely forgive the alleged lapse in his memory just like that. 

“Pancakes?” he asks.

“Bacon,” Clint answers.

\----

Steve no longer appearing around breakfast or taking up his usual position in the gym is strange to get used to. Even though they both rarely broke out of their thoughts, it was nice to run to the steady sound of Steve’s fists on the punching bag in the background.

DC seems good for him though, Clint has to admit it to himself. He’s got something going on at the Smithsonian that seems to be embarrassing to him based on the way he skirts all their questions about it. New York had too many memories, Clint assumes. It would be pretty difficult to adapt to a city you think of as home that has changed as much as New York has since the fifties. It’d be like if Clint decided one day to jump right back into the circus where he’d left off. It’s not so easy to just leap right into your old roles.

Tony seems to pout a little extra with Steve gone, though it’s hard to really tell with how little anyone sees of him. Clint has never been especially likely to go out and buy friendship bracelets with the man, but it feels odd to never see the guy currently providing him with the roof over his head. 

Tony’s increasing presence in the lab also means that Clint hasn't been to see Bruce in weeks. Not that there's been any new developments to analyze, but it would be nice to keep on top of things.

As if sharing a wavelength with Clint, Bruce shows up early on a Monday at the door to his apartment with a laptop and notebook in one hand, and a steaming mug in the other. Clint lets him into his living room without a word. 

“That bad down there?” Clint jokes.

“I don't know how one man can run as long as he does on energy bars and gogurt,” Bruce responds. 

Clint laughs, but he knows Bruce isn't exaggerating either. 

“Something up, or are you just looking for quiet?” he asks, unsure. 

Bruce shrugs with one shoulder, careful to not slosh his tea. “Bit of both, really. Has there been anything new?”

He seems to expect it when Clint shakes his head no.

“Busy tonight?” Bruce asks, continuing once Clint shakes his head again. “Willing to let Jarvis read your waves while you sleep?”

Clint stutters briefly at the unexpected question before he remembers Bruce floating the idea once before. It’s possible that whatever is happening might not be visible from the surface, Bruce too far away to see clearly and Clint too near. If Bruce thinks that another recording of brain waves will provide the most objective facts to observe, Clint hasn’t found any reason to doubt him.

Bruce grabs a seat at the little breakfast bar that Clint rarely uses and produces a small silicon circle from his pocket, clear and ordinary looking.

“Two of these, on your temples.” He presses it against his own in demonstration. “All you have to do is sleep normally.”

“I thought Jarvis didn’t need the extra equipment,” Clint questions. Their previous scan had been so shockingly simple in Clint’s mind.

“He doesn’t need them,” Bruce agrees. “This scan is longer, though, these can help with the precision and detail.”

“Sure.” Clint can really only shrug. “Why not.”

\----

Waking up with Phil gone and stepping into the routine of his morning with Emily is just a little bit stranger knowing that Jarvis is watching. Or, well, not _watching_ , but potentially getting a glimpse into this weird almost secret life. The goal, though, is to get a reading of a regular night’s sleep at home, and he doesn’t normally spend all day thinking about Jarvis, so he puts it out of his mind the best that he can and carries on with his business. 

Business, as it turns out, becomes a bit more interesting than usual right in the middle of the morning when Emily’s usual noisy babbling suddenly becomes much more solid.

“Da!”

His head whips around toward where she’s been fiddling with a plastic keyring set for most of the morning, babbling the whole time. Her babbling has been a constant for a long time already, even mimicking conversation turn taking with Phil time and time again. It’s funny and cute and silly, but this- It could have been nothing.

“Hi, baby,” he says, approaching her position on the ground.

“Da!” she repeats, bouncing in place and waving her keys around in her hand. 

“I knew it!” Clint scrambles to grab his phone from the couch and open the camera as quickly as he can. He drops to his stomach on the ground, already recording. “Hi Emily,” he goads her to react again.

Emily reaches to grab the phone right away, grunting when it’s pulled out of her reach.

“Can you say hi again?” Clint presses. “Say dada.”

She repeats her “da” again, and then in succession, smiling past the phone at Clint smiling at her. He stops the recording and drops his phone, smoothing down Emily’s wildly sticking up hair with one hand.

“Phil is going to lose his mind.”

He sends the video in a text with no warning or description and carries on with his mental to do list of chores. It sometimes feels like he’s steaming an impossible amount of bottles clean every day. How one tiny little girl can go through so many every day makes no sense to him at all.

He’s interrupted by his loud ringtone blaring from where he’d left his phone, and he has to rush to grab it before he misses the call entirely. 

“You’re going to make me cry at work,” Phil is already saying before Clint has the chance to properly say hello. “She said it!”

“She did!” Clint can hear the smile in Phil’s voice and can’t fight his own away.

“What’s she doing now?” Phil asks. “Do you think she’ll repeat it?”

Clint peeks into the pen where Emily had been playing on her own while he cleaned up. She blinks up at him, slow and bleary. “She’s falling asleep.”

“I can’t believe I missed it.” Phil is pouting again, it feels strange to not even need to see it to know. 

“You’ll be home soon, I’m sure she’ll have plenty to say then.”

\----

“What’s this, mission?” Clint asks when he walks in on Natasha packing a suitcase in her room.

She glances over her shoulder briefly at him and goes back to folding a shirt. “Something like that. Headed to DC, Fury wants Steve and me together on this one.”

Clint doesn’t know if this means he’s been unofficially sidelined or if this one really doesn’t need him. It’s not often that Natasha goes somewhere that he doesn’t.

“I told Fury to sit you out on this one,” she admits. “We both know how seasick you get.”

“You’re going out to sea?” Clint asks.

Natasha shoves a pair of boots into her case, smushing them down like she can convince them to become less bulky by way of force. 

“Information grab, that’s all.” Natasha pulls the boots back out and drops them on the ground with a thud. “In and out, it’ll be easy.” 

Clint slides her case along her bed so it's in front of him, reaching in to rearrange some of her clothes into tighter piles and making space. “Strike team?” He bends and grabs the boots, fitting them neatly into the newly created space. 

“Yeah.” Natasha stares at his work. She shoves his shoulder with her own. “Asshole.”

He laughs and snorts at her. He doesn’t know how many times they’ve had the “folding vs rolling” packing debate where her main argument always seems to just be “but wrinkles”. 

“Keep an eye on that Rumlow,” Clint says. “The guy’s a douche.”

“I’m a big girl,” Natasha replies.

Clint hums a grumpy agreement. If anything, at least she could kick Rumlow’s ass.

“Heard anything from Bruce?” she asks.

“Nothing so far.” Clint slouches on the edge of Natasha’s neatly made bed. “Dunno it’s that’s a good sign or a bad one.”

\--

The follow up meeting with Bruce happens in the lab again, and Clint is feeling oddly, unexpectedly anxious. They’re alone watching a visual rendering of the endless stream of information taken via Jarvis overnight. Somewhere in there, there might be something that will reveal the truth of what’s going on. 

“We’re not going to conclude anything today,” Bruce starts right off the bat. “You don’t have to worry about that yet.”

It’s enough of a relief to Clint’s system that he almost allows himself to sigh aloud. Living a month of not knowing what the hell is happening has been anxiety inducing, but somehow this new idea of coming to a conclusion feels just as scary.

“There’s a lot of data to dig through, and Jarvis will need to work a bit more slowly than usual to-” Bruce stops himself short at the sound of a series of rapid beeping.

The beeping continues for a moment before the lab door slides open and Tony Stark meanders in like the door had been wide open all along.

“Apologies, Dr. Banner,” Jarvis says. “He utilized his manual override code.”

“I _was_ locked out!” Tony exclaims. He stops in his place when he turns the corner and sees Clint sitting at his usual spot on the table. He squints at him. “So there is another woman, and his name is Barton.”

“Tony,” Bruce says with a patience Clint can’t imagine ever finding in himself.

“I suspected you found a new playmate,” Tony interrupts. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“We’re working, Tony.” Clint has already decided that he wants in on whatever it is that helps Bruce find this zen.

“Oh, no, I noticed.” Tony drops heavily into the empty wheely chair near his desk and spins once. “Hard not to notice when a weirdly massive amount of Jarvis’ attention spends the night occupied on something and he won’t tell me what.”

“It’s private,” Bruce explains. It’s somehow simplifying without being condescending enough to set Tony off.

Stark stares between Bruce and Clint, trying to get a read off of either of them. Clint mastered being unreadable a long, long time ago, and Bruce is apparently a Jedi mind master or something. When it becomes apparent that neither of their minds can be read, Tony huffs and slouches further into his seat.

“I get it, I respect that,” he says. “I just want to know, is it something to worry about?”

Clint looks at Bruce. Honestly, he’s not even sure that it is or isn’t something to worry about. He can’t see how it would jeopardize the team, but Bruce might be the one who knows best. It looks like he’s going to answer on Clint’s behalf for a brief second, his mouth opens, but clamps shut again.

“I’ve been going through something kind of weird.” Clint turns to better look at Tony. “We’ve been looking into it.”

“Clint, you don’t have to…” Bruce starts to interrupt, but Clint stops him.

“It’s fine.” Clint doesn’t say that he’s also considering what help Tony may be able to provide. “I’ve been having these dreams that don’t behave like normal dreams, like I’ve been living two fleshed out lives.”

Tony looks surprised, then interested, immediately absorbed. He leans forward in his seat. “How long? What kind of dreams?”

“A little more than a month.” Tony nods like this makes sense. It probably does, considering how often in the past month he’s found himself locked out of the lab. 

“Any chance it’s a SHIELD thing?” Tony gets two shrugs in response. 

“We’re trying to figure it out,” Clint says. “If it’s SHIELD, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“That’s what Jarvis was doing?” Two nods this time.

Bruce gestures toward the display of still rapidly moving and gathering data. Tony glances at the screen, seemingly without bothering to take in anything that’s actually there. 

“Need a second pair of eyes?” Tony asks. “I’ll take a peek in your head, take a peek into SHIELD, we’re already pretty much side by side integrated into their security systems.” He speaks in that rapid Stark way that is both overwhelming and signifying that he only wants to help.

“Not… right now.” Clint hesitates to leap headfirst into Tony’s offered help. “I’m not entirely convinced this _is_ SHIELD.”

Tony’s eyebrows pinch together, baffled and not the type to hide it for anyone’s sake. “Who the hell else would it be? Something strange in the neighborhood? It’s probably SHIELD.”

He’s not wrong. Clint knows it, Bruce knows it. SHIELD gets up to more suspect business than anyone would think possible while still remaining a well hidden secret from the public eye.

“We’ll do this first,” Bruce intervenes. The perfect mediator tends to let Tony have his way either now or eventually. Bruce tends to prefer eventually. 

“Fine. Let me know if anything comes of it.” Tony requests, although everyone involved knows there’s not a lot of option when it comes to a Tony Stark request. 

Bruce glances at Clint like waiting for his approval. “Yeah, sure. Cat’s out of the bag now anyway.”

When Tony leaves, he’s already mumbling to himself about something or another. There’s no telling if it’s a plan forming or something else entirely. Clint has always been pretty good at reading people, but there’s something about Stark that’s always somehow evaded him.

“You know he's probably already digging through everything SHIELD has, right?” Bruce asks after the lab door closes with a woosh. 

Clint rattles a boot against the leg of the table he's seated on. “Yeah,” he says through a sigh. “I know.”

\----

Emily continues to babble all morning to Phil’s complete happiness as he gets ready for work. Some more syllables appear, but nothing more solid than her ‘da’ from the day before. 

Her cuteness persists throughout the day, which makes it difficult to concentrate on accomplishing anything significant. 

They trade off, as per usual, when Phil gets home, wanting nothing more than to hold and hug her. Allowing them to continue their routine, take care of her and themselves until it’s Clint’s turn to leave for a few hours for class. When he comes home, aching but happy the way he always is after having the chance to shoot, Phil is there and Emily is actually happy to see him. Phil massages the sore muscles in his arms before bed, and it’s too easy to forget the real world concerns that had played on Clint’s mind before.

It all goes as expected. It’s easy and comfortable and they work like a well oiled machine built for being together. Clint has never seen it before, but he thinks that if marital bliss really is a thing, this must be what it’s like. Somehow, instead of sounding ridiculous, he can kind of see the appeal of it. It’s nice to be able to predict what will happen during a day, to be able to go out for a few hours and know you’ll be coming home to the same thing you left: your family.

It’s not necessarily _better_ than his life with the Avengers. He loves the work that he gets to do, the kind of odd group they’ve managed to scrape together. Despite the unpredictability and batshit insanity it’s brought into his life, he enjoys it.

It’s not better, but it’s still really, really nice.

\----

If it was hard to see Steve leaving the tower a little over a week ago, Natasha is even worse.

“It’s going to be so quiet with you gone.” Clint is not pouting as they say their goodbyes in the garage alone together. 

“Oh, Tony will still be around.” She glances at the ceiling, as much of an eyeroll as anything. “You’ll have plenty of noise.”

“Not what I meant.”

“I know.” Natasha smiles, trying hard to not look like she’s worried about leaving him behind. Clint knows she is, but he appreciates the effort. “You’ll call me if anything new happens.”

“As always,” Clint agrees. “You too?”

She nods, they hug, and Clint watches until the car borrowed from Tony disappears into the city traffic. Despite the repeated assurances that the mission will be simple, in and out, he feels tense.

\--

Tony latches onto Clint’s arm in the hall later in the day and pulls him aside. 

“I've been digging,” Tony says. His voice is quiet and secretive in a way that's unusual for him. “SHIELD is up to something secret.”

Clint blinks. SHIELD deals pretty exclusively in secretive. 

“No.” Tony rolls his eyes like slowing down to explain himself is exhausting. “Extra weird and secret. I'm used to their stuff being locked down, this is different.”

“Different how?” Clint asks. He's not a fan of this news immediately following Natasha’s departure. 

“It’s not just off limits,” Tony begins. “It’s coded, locked, off limits within the off limits stuff.”

“I could ask around,” Clint offers. 

“Hold off, I don’t get the feeling you want the attention,” Tony says. “But keep an ear out. Something is up.”

\----

It doesn’t take long for Phil to pick up on Clint’s anxiety in the morning. Hunched over awkwardly with Emily clinging to his fingers and taking unbalanced steps, it’s obvious Phil can see the distant look in Clint’s eyes, but he doesn’t bring it up right away. Instead he leads Emily so she waddles toward Clint with him, smiling all the way.

He’s worried about Natasha. No matter how capable he knows she is of looking out for herself, it’s tough to know that he won’t be there to watch her back for her. It does help a bit, though, knowing that she’s with Steve. Knowing Steve would risk his life for any one of his teammates.

Emily has breakfast first, which she eats greedily and messily and falls into a content nap shortly after, which is typically the signal that it’s time for Clint to get up and make adult breakfast. Phil stops him before he can even fully rise from the couch, one hand holding onto Clint’s forearm to keep him from leaving.

“You seem stressed,” Phil says, cutting right to it.

“Oh, sorry.” Clint looks at him, but it’s blurry, like his eyes still refuse to focus on what’s in front of him. 

“Don’t apologize.” Phil sounds almost baffled, his fingertips against Clint’s arms press a little harder. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I don’t know,” Clint admits to Phil and himself. “I just feel… on edge.” It’s the only way he can bring himself to describe it. Normally, he’d be waking up several times a night from stress dreams when feeling like this, heart pounding. His chest feels tight and he can’t absorb himself into the routine here like he normally would be able to. It’s uncomfortable, everything too tight, too close.

“Do you need anything?” Phil anchors his one hand on Clint’s forearm and the other meanders from his shoulder to his elbow and back repeatedly. It’s unexpectedly nice. “Do you want to go back to bed?”

Clint shakes his head once. “Don’t want to be alone.”

“Okay,” Phil agrees easily. “Sure. Come here.”

He shifts and readjusts so he’s slouching into the back cushion of the couch, then lifts one arm in invitation for Clint to curl close. Clint accepts and slides across the cushion into Phil’s side, allowing himself to be pulled until he’s using Phil’s chest as a pillow.

“I should make breakfast,” Clint weakly tries one last protest.

“Forget breakfast for now,” Phil insists. “You don’t need any coffee when you’re stressed, anyway.”

Clint sighs heavily and closes his eyes. Phil is right again, of course. Phil is also really nice to lay on. He still smells nice, less cologne and more just natural Phil smell, but that kind of makes it nicer. He can hear Phil’s heartbeat, steady and strong right where he’s resting, and he brings a hand to rest there, to feel the physical confirmation of that.

His fear roams from Natasha on a strange mission amongst unusual SHIELD secrets alone to this. To Bruce finding something in the scans to confirm that it isn’t real in any capacity. Either Clint is suffering from some kind of delusion, or this is a strange magic that is fixable. Fixable, in this case, meaning removable. It means losing this, and losing Phil, all over again. Loss seems to sum up the source of most of his stress, currently. So he has abandonment issues, big fucking surprise. Steve, Natasha, Phil. He’s already lost him once, before he ever got to really have him; can he handle losing him again now that he has? 

“Remember when I had my surgery?” Phil breaks through the silence. “How nervous we both were?”

His hand comes to rest beside Clint’s on his chest, which he hadn’t realized was resting right atop that mystery scar. Maybe it was a heart surgery, like he and Natasha had guessed before. It seems like something Coulson would have mentioned, but it could have slipped by somehow. The skin is still raised and rough, easy to feel even through the shirt.

“Then right after that when I said I wanted a baby.” There’s a hint of a laugh in his voice when he says it. “You looked at me like I was crazy.”

There’s something soothing about just listening to Phil talk, Clint finds. It pulls him back to himself, back to a place of comfort and ease, even though that seems counterintuitive in Clint’s head. He doesn’t respond and Phil doesn’t seem to expect him to.

“You’ve stuck around, though,” Phil continues. “I’m thankful.”

\--

He’s expecting to hear from Natasha when she calls two days later on a burner number. He’s not expecting the long silence that greets his half mumbled hello.

“Fury is dead.” He’s not expecting that.

It’s April first and there’s a part of him that _hopes_ this is a joke, but he knows better. He’d been making to remove himself from bed, but the statement knocks him right back onto his mattress.

Nat fills him in on the most bare bones of the events since she’d left New York. What had started out as a basic information grab has somehow ended with her and Steve as fugitives. The whole story hits him as if he's underwater, muffled and garbled, the shock of it ringing in his head. 

“You're sure?” he finally forces himself to ask. He thinks he interrupted Natasha in the middle of a sentence, maybe. 

“I saw with my own eyes,” she confirms. 

Clint would much rather trust his own eyes, but Natasha’s are the second most trustworthy he knows of.

“Shit.” There aren't tears, just a whirlwind of other garbage all slinging around inside him. The director of SHIELD, the man who plucked Clint from the fast track to a young demise, dead; the last possibility of straightforward answers about Phil just died with Fury. “Fuck! How?”

“Assassin.” She sounds stressed, now that Clint listens a bit more closely. 

“An assassin?” Clint asks, the very idea striking him as ridiculous. No assassin on Earth can get close enough to Nick Fury and continue to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide.

“The Winter Soldier,” she responds bluntly.

The title sends a chill down Clint’s spine. The name would send a chill down the spine of anyone in their world with a sense of self preservation.

“I thought that was just a scary story.” He sits up a bit more, but still can’t find the strength to leave his bed. It feels like he just found out the most unkillable person he’s ever known was not only killed, but by the boogeyman or something. The Winter Soldier. There’s just no way he’s even real.

“We’re following a lead now, getting close.” He can hear an engine rumbling in the background, tires running on the road.

She says nothing more, and he knows she won’t tell him where she’s going, so he doesn’t ask. She’ll reject his offer to find her and help, so he doesn’t ask. 

“Be careful,” he says, allowing some of that concern to come through anyway.

“You too,” she responds. “Watch your back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned it before, but I update for wips and whatnot on my [tumblr](http://qianwanshi.tumblr.com/) of the same name! I keep it updated and post previews sometimes too! luv u guys


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the shit gets real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello friends my dear darling pals! HERE WE ARE AGAIN. I'm anticipating this being wrapped up in 13 chapters, so we're really really almost there. but this is a sandbox that is deep, my friends, it goes on and on and on. 
> 
> By that I mean I just have a million thousand offshoots none of which feature any drama and seriously I can't wait for them to be out there for your eyeballs to see.
> 
> to be safe: warning for non-main character death & an off screen death

Things kind of go to shit all at once. At least, they do in New York.

After his call from Natasha, he had been incapable of anything other than sitting in stunned, scared silence. If Fury is really and truly gone, an astronomical amount of shit is about to hit the fan.

At some point, Jarvis had picked up on his stress and inquired, and so now the crumbling remains of their team in New York sit assembled in the wide open living room.

“J, lockdown on all upper floors,” Tony commands. “No one in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clint fills them in on the call he’d received from Natasha and everything she’d detailed in those short minutes. Tony and Bruce both look bowled over by it, big brains making connections at a million miles a second.

“Where are Steve and Natasha?” Bruce asks first.

“I don’t know.” Clint hates admitting that he doesn’t know where their teammates are, where his closest friend is. He doesn’t have any nails left to chew. “Off grid. I can’t track them, can’t see them, she wouldn’t tell me.”

“That unusual?” Tony asks.

The only response Clint bothers with is a side glance that suggests that Tony is very stupid. 

“Okay.” Tony raises his hands, projecting inoffensiveness. “It’s unusual.”

“What does this mean for SHIELD?” Bruce asks before an all out bickering match can begin. 

“I don’t know,” Clint repeats. He drops his face into his hands and squeezes his head. This entire day has built up to one hell of an impressive headache. “Coffee, then thinking,” he declares.

Tony seems to agree, standing with a bit of a flourish, keeping his hands busy on his trek to the kitchen.

Clint checks his phone for what feels like the thousandth time of the day. Still no more calls or messages. The same blank screen stares back up at him as before.

\--

It's a weird juxtaposition, counterbalance, he doesn’t know. All he can really say is that while everything in New York very suddenly and very rapidly picks up, life in Wisconsin slows down to a leisurely crawl. 

The sun finally makes somewhat of an appearance during the day and the snow begins to vanish, leaving everything soggy and muddy. Early Spring seeps into both of his lives, but while the city remains dull and grey, Wisconsin comes into color and blossoms around them. Despite it all, it’s relaxing. He and Phil have lunch on campus again, outside this time, while Emily sleeps and drools in her stroller. (It had taken Clint embarrassingly close to half an hour to figure out how to collapse the stroller to fit in the car, and an equal struggle to get it back out.)

The kids in his archery lessons come alive at the suggestion to try shooting outside soon, and are already getting giddy from a looming summer break. The adults in his signing class are impersonal but kind, and seem pleased when he comments on the progress they’ve made. The lesson book has proven to be a life saver to Clint. It’s one thing to teach a kid to shoot, it’s something else entirely to teach adults a second language. 

It continues this way back and forth for days. There are near constant updates from news sources, delivered to them by the kind voice of Jarvis. An unknown masked figure, Captain America, an all out battle in the middle of the streets of DC. What footage they do see looks awful, Steve scrambling and fighting for his own life more than to protect civilians. Bruce turns it off before they get stuck watching and analyzing and jumping to conclusions. They’ll call, he says. 

Clint hadn’t been able to spot Natasha in the mess.

Clint hasn’t received a phone call in two days.

Falling asleep is more difficult than ever before, pretending everything's just peachy in his strange dream world is near impossible. He tries, and Phil doesn't seem to realize that he's stressing out any more than usual. Clint spaces out while feeding Emily, dwelling on and overanalyzing every possible reason for Natasha’s radio silence. Even the idea of losing her too is too hard to consider, the reality of it would destroy him. 

Sitwell calls him on Friday, April 4th. It's unusual, but definitely not unheard of from him. The chances he's calling for a friendly chat are slim to none. 

“What's up?” Clint plays casual anyway, knowing full well that it used to piss Sitwell off even on their best days of their handler/handler relationship. 

“Everything,” he replies. “Your eyes on the news?”

“Not since yesterday,” Clint admits.

He's already finding a television before Sitwell can suggest he does. It's not a live feed that's playing, it looks like a recap from the fight in DC before with the masked man. Two news anchors deliver rapid fire information about the battle, Clint reading the captions briefly before giving up to analyze the footage himself. Cap kneeling in the street, surrounded by guns, shield stripped away from his side, getting shoved into the back of a van at gunpoint. A flash of vibrant red hair inside the van has a flood of relief filling him so suddenly, he almost misses Sitwell talking. 

“-betrayed us, our mission. He went rogue.” To Clint, that sounds distinctly unlike Steve. “You heard from anyone?”

“No,” Clint lies without effort. He’s still SHIELD. Lie even if you don’t know that you have to. “Went rogue?”

Sitwell sounds tense just from the way he’s breathing, Clint can picture exactly the shade of red his face must be. “He attacked SHIELD. He kidnapped me and tried to shove me off a building. I barely made it out alive.”

If any portion of the statement is true, if Steve was threatening Sitwell, he must have had a damn good reason to do so. 

The footage on TV replays a second time, a constant loop. Clint pauses and examines the faces of the gunmen, all wearing unidentifiable tactical suits. Even with the shaky footage from the helicopter camera, it’s impossible to miss Rumlow and his big douchebag douche-face at the head of the crowd putting Steve into cuffs. Something sick twists in Clint’s gut.

“Does Fury know about it?” he asks, a test he isn’t sure he wants to know the answer to.

“Of course he knows.” Sitwell doesn’t even sound like he’s lying, so sure of himself. If Clint didn’t know Fury is dead, he would be none the wiser. “Listen, we have a team on the way to you.”

“Why the hell send a team here?” Clint presses. “The action is in DC.”

“Protection.” No elaboration, no suggestion as to why they would need it. “We’ll have questions.”

“Okay,” Clint grits out before hanging up without a word, already on his feet.

“Jarvis, get Tony and Bruce up here.” Clint moves efficiently through his apartment, gathering his gear, changing his pants. He drops his phone in the toilet, letting it fry itself in the water.

Jarvis ‘yes sir’s and Tony and Bruce appear a few short minutes later. Tony only needs to glance briefly at Clint half dressed in his work gear to know something is going on. 

“What's going on? We going to DC?” he asks. Clint suspects he's already calling his suit to him. 

“DC is coming to us,” Clint corrects. “Don’t know who or why, but SHIELD is coming and they’re off the list of trustworthy help right now.”

“They were on the list?” Bruce asks.

Clint pulls a new shirt over his head and shrugs, Bruce kind of makes a good point.

“If you don’t want to be part of this fight, this is your chance to leave.” It’s an offer Clint would only ever make for Bruce. This isn’t his mess to fight in, it never really was.

“How far off are they?” Tony asks. 

Clint opens his mouth to respond, but Jarvis gets there first. “Four cars incoming, sir, likely more on the way.”

Tony’s suit flies piece by piece through the open doorway, sliding around his body like the armor that it is. “Jarvis, evac the lower floors. You.” He points at Bruce. “No Hulking in the new kitchen.”

While Bruce heads off toward the stairs and Tony picks up as much info as possible from Jarvis, Clint grabs the already waiting elevator to the roof. His heart races during the short ride, but he’s ready for whatever may be waiting for him on the outside. Protection, according to Sitwell. In Clint’s experience, protection doesn’t usually show up in swarms of full riot gear with guns drawn.

The streets are flooding with people, unsure where to go or why they’re being evacuated. Working at the Stark building must come with a lot of stress for the average person. Still, the overlook from the roof provides a decent vantage point for Clint to see the black SHIELD vans screeching in through the crowd all together. Agents pour out in full battle suits and armed to the teeth.

“Our guests look like they’re here to do a lot more than talk,” he calls over the comm lines to Tony. Possibly to Bruce, unless he’s already gone green.

“I've got eight in front,” Clint declares. “No safe shot to take.” The streets are flooding with evacuees from the office sections of the tower. It works well to confuse the agents, but shooting into a crowd of civilians is pretty high on the list of Not Cool Things To Do.

“Jarvis,” Tony adds. “Back door?”

“There are five men at the rear door,” Jarvis informs them both. “They appear to be keeping guard and are not making entrance.”

The eight men in front enter and scale the building, a distraction that they're all prepared for. Eight quickly multiplies to twice as many when they discover they've been anticipated, and the fight breaks out. Clint takes out who he can, staying as non-lethal as possible. Attacking or not, these are his fellow agents, he can decide how lethal he wants to be when he knows the whole story. 

He takes his fair share of hits for his efforts, but it's something he's willing to do. He brings down a couple of agents trying to sneak onto his perch with a solid knock to the head and a rope slinging arrow. He turns and shoots another arrow into the leg of a third making her way toward him, gun drawn. He kicks the gun away from where she writhes in pain. 

“Hey, leg is a lot nicer than head,” he points out. 

“Fuck you,” she grunts back at him.

She drags herself across the ground a few short feet away from him. Interestingly, in the opposite direction of her kicked away gun. Clint watches her go curiously, leg dragging behind her, right toward the edge of the tower and not slowing down.

“Hey!” 

She ignores him and continues, one second there, one second gone toward the world below.

Clint doesn’t think, running directly after her and diving over the edge. He turns enough to shoot a grappling arrow back at the edge of the tower and scrambles to catch her as soon as the arrow is loose. She growls when he grabs her but says nothing. The rope pulls taut and Clint braces himself for the hit to the outside of the building. The agent screams at the pain when the impact jostles her leg, struggling in his arms.

“Hold still!” Clint commands.

She begins to vocalize on an exhale, but her voice gets caught in her throat. She chokes and gurgles and twitches, a bit of foam between her lips, then she's dead in an instant. 

“What the fuck?” The words are out of Clint's lips before he can stop them. This is even crazier than they were already assuming it was. He shouts over the comm line, “Tony? Could use a lift, the nest is blown.”

“Where?” Tony responds. He sounds at ease, maybe things inside aren't so bad. The windows are wide, the desks inside are deserted, he thinks he sees a hulk run by the open door in the hallway beyond. 

“Outside, south wall,” he answers. 

“Floor?” Tony prompts. 

“I don't know!” Clint’s grip is beginning to strain. Too much dead weight on a rope not meant for just hanging around. “Offices, below residential floors. You can’t miss me.”

Blissfully, Tony shows up relatively quickly and with very little attention on him. He carts Clint and the dead agent effortlessly to a much lower rooftop nearby. 

“Who’s this?” Tony gestures at the agent, now lying between them on the new rooftop. His face plate raises for a more personal look at her. 

“This isn’t SHIELD,” Clint declares. “SHIELD doesn’t do _suicide pills_.”

Tony’s eyes go wide and he looks at the agent again. Before either of them can talk, more agents dressed in all black clamber up and over the fire escape ready to shoot.

“Fight now, talk later,” Tony shouts. He sends a couple repulsor beams at them, knocking some of them to the ground in an instant and flies off, back to the tower.

Clint climbs to a better vantage point and shoots, but as long as the fire escape on the side of the building is lowered, he knows they won’t stop pouring out at him, distracting him from where the real fight is. Once the roof is cleared enough for it to be safe, he breaks for the escape, he’ll blow the damn thing up if he needs to.

A lagging agent meets him on the first landing down with flying fists. His first swing misses, the second lands with a crack to the side of Clint’s head. Clint slams him bodily into the brick of the building, continuing his quick descent once he’s collapsed from the solid hit.

It’s a small building, thankfully, and the lowest part of the escape is only two more flights down. Clint drops to his stomach on the grated landing in front of the drop down ladder. He stretches to lift it from its lowered position the best he can, raising it away from the ground and grunting into the effort to tie it securely. As long as it’s tied, it can’t be grabbed again from the ground, and agents will stop pouring into his nest and disrupting his work. 

Once he’s sure it’s secured, he stands, set on returning to his new vantage point to get eyes back on the ground and track any additional incoming people. He’s not being any help to anyone while messing around with a ladder in an alleyway. The hit lands on him before he’s even fully turned around, he could swear he feels his head rattle around like a cartoon character smacked between two cymbals. It’s the man from the highest landing, the one Clint had thought he’d left unconscious. He lands another two rapid hits into his gut and chest, Clint doing everything he can to scramble and defend himself. 

One step back, barely a chance to swing in retaliation before the guy is landing another. One too many hits to the head have him off balance and the solid shove is unexpected. He goes from fighting at the edge of a fire escape to falling blindly in the blink of an eye.

He lands unevenly on something, a dumpster probably, far from the first time for that. The breath knocks out of him in a rush so that he can’t even let out the painful noise building up in his chest. The loud echoing sound made by his head hitting strikes him before the pain does. The rebound lands him on the road in a useless heap of limbs, head bouncing a second time against the cement.

Clint gasps awake in bed, heart racing and adrenaline pumping. The sun isn’t shining into the room yet, but he’s definitely in Wisconsin.

“Oh no,” he groans to himself. “No, no, bad.”

Phil grunts in question next to him, eyes squeezing more tightly together. 

“Nothing,” Clint reassures him breathlessly. “Sleep.”

Phil doesn't respond, already sleeping again. 

So, okay, Clint fell, he remembers that much. Thankfully none of the aches that tend to come from crashing into a dumpster have carried over with him here. He must have gotten knocked out, and so he’s here with Phil. He can just go back to sleep and get back to New York and continue this fight.

Ten minutes pass with his eyes clamped shut in the dark room, fifteen, twenty. Sleep won’t come back to him. His heart is still pounding too fast, thrumming with energy that won’t let his mind be still enough for sleep.

He steps out of bed carefully and dresses in the dark. There’s still at least an hour before any alarms will be going off, plenty of time to do something to burn this extra energy off. He grabs keys and leaves his phone, bending to tie his shoes before heading out. The apartment is silent, Emily and Phil both sleeping soundly. 

Almost to the door, Clint stops and turns back to the kitchen. There’s no scrap paper in sight, so he grabs a few of the alphabet fridge magnets and arranges them into the words “on a jog”, masterfully using the number 0 as the second ‘o’. Burning the energy off is important, making sure Phil doesn’t think he’s run off (again) is possibly even more so.

The morning is cold, but the air feels good in his lungs, brisk and fresh. It’s nothing like the grey air New York offers at any time of the day. It calms his mind enough to think things through. He fell, got knocked out, definitely landed on his back wrong. Luck on his side, Jarvis alerted Tony right away and he was moved to safety. He doesn't want to think about if luck wasn't on his side. 

The sunrise comes with birds and the beginnings of morning commuters driving down the narrow residential road past Clint, looking tired and weary. He turns and jogs back home.

Phil is awake when he gets back, stirring milk into his coffee and watching the toaster with tired eyes. He glances over when Clint’s keys clatter against the storage dish. 

“Got your note.” He gestures toward the fridge. 

Clint smiles, not feeling nearly as tense as he thinks he should be. “Didn't want to scare you.”

“No,” Phil agrees, looking distracted. It's a second before Clint puts together that he's distracted by _him_ , looking at him in his workout clothes like he's some... ogle-thing.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which part of Clint’s brain you ask, Friday is morning class day, and Phil has to go. Not before taking a lingering goodbye kiss and a command to shower because he stinks. 

After that, the day passes by in a blur. Clint stresses about getting to sleep, getting back to New York, but he isn’t Stressed. There isn't an anxiety attack, no need to run away. He keeps telling himself that night will come and he will go home. He’ll be in medical at Stark tower, which will suck, but he’ll be okay.

Phil asks about his morning run when he gets home and Clint chalks it up to a nightmare he couldn’t settle down from. Phil accepts it and Clint is allowed to continue to space out, anticipating his chance to sleep without rushing to bed at 8pm.

The time finally comes for bed and Clint is under the covers in an instant, face shoved into his pillow. Phil laughs and tells him he looks like a little kid all tucked in and eager for a bedtime story.

“I didn’t sleep well last night.” It’s a bad excuse, but he had mentioned a nightmare before. “I’ve been looking forward to bed.”

Phil curls into bed next to him, still looking amused. “Well there’s plenty of time to sleep in tomorrow.”

He pats Clint’s arm twice, comforting. It’s familiar, something they’ve both shared dozens of times before all this, just working together. It was sometimes the kind and comforting gesture like now, it was sometimes the move of a person bleeding out and afraid. Clint finds that this version, in this setting, is highly preferable.

It’s easy to fall asleep to the rhythm of breathing beside him, meshing so thoroughly with his own that it becomes impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. He dreams in the same disjointed confusing way that he used to a lifetime ago, some indistinct setting in an unknown crowd of people with a disproportionately difficult goal to reach and a malfunctioning flow of time.

He wakes up in Wisconsin next to Phil, still in the same position he‘d gone to sleep in. Dread weighs like a lead ball in his gut. There was no New York, it’s morning, he’d slept the entire night and dreamt like normal. He desperately ignores the voice in his head that tells him this is worse than being simply knocked out, hissing in his mind that the agent on the fire escape had finished the job before Tony could get to him.

“Nn-” Phil half mumbles an objection when Clint begins to move. “We’re sleeping in.” He latches even tighter to Clint’s side, keeping him exactly in his place. 

It’s… pretty difficult to say no to that, honestly. Freaking out internally or otherwise, a sleepy Phil Coulson is connected to his side forcing him to stay in bed. There’s still that part of him that remembers this as only a wild fantasy, and here it is.

He spends the entire day flipping back and forth between bone deep terror and acceptance of this most recent turn of events. Phil blows him before breakfast, and when he returns the gesture with unbound enthusiasm, it’s pretty easy to accept that if this is his afterlife, it’s pretty fucking sweet. He flips pancakes and contemplates the possibility of never seeing his team again. Emily giggles and crawls across the floor at top speed toward him, and maybe this baby thing is something he can do. He almost cries when he thinks about leaving Natasha behind to discover his death later, just like they’d discovered Phil late. He’s got emotional whiplash by the time afternoon rolls around.

They have dinner on their little balcony before the sun gets too low. Even in April, the winter chill clings desperately, lingering in the air around them. It’s not below freezing anymore, but the Great Lakes air somehow refuses to be warm like any of the other sensible states. 

Emily sits in the well created by his folded legs concentrating solely on devouring the soft cracker in her hands. She makes a mess of her own face and his pants, but he barely notices really.

“What have you been thinking about all day?” Phil’s socked foot nudges Clint’s knee, not pulling away.

Clint blinks out of his thoughts of winter and wondering over the logistics of death bringing him to Wisconsin. Phil doesn’t look suspicious or grumpy, just like a man wondering what’s on the mind of his husband.

“Death,” he admits, still unable to lie to Phil no matter the inconvenience of it.

Phil looks like he’d been expecting anything else, but passes no vocal judgement. 

“Just like, what happens after, where we go. You know-” he blinks away to hand Emily the bottle she's stretching for. “Stuff like that.”

Phil hums. “Lucky for you, you're not married to a philosophy professor.” He laughs like it's some kind of inside joke they share. It may very well be. 

“What do you think?” Clint asks.

“I dunno.” Phil raises one shoulder minutely as he leans forward to refresh Clint’s glass of iced tea. “Probably nothing.”

Clint doesn’t show anything to suggest he agrees or disagrees either way. That may be right and he may not be dead, but it’s also possible that it’s not right. Maybe death isn’t very different from dreaming, and now he has the chance to finish out this average normal life. Maybe that’s what happened after Phil died, too, and this is it for both of them. 

It's a hell of a lot better than life just ending and being infinite nothingness. 

Plans for a vacation are made throughout dinner and after, until it eventually devolves into the two of them listing the most distant and absurd places they possibly can. Clint has already been to half of them, he almost slips up and comments that Paris isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but he stops himself at the last moment.

He falls asleep thinking about the logic of mourning your own death.

He wakes up Sunday morning next to Phil again. He hadn’t thought that he had been holding on to any lingering hopes of waking up in New York again, but it’s obvious now that he had. It hadn’t happened. Nothing had happened. He curls on his side, fighting to keep his breath from getting too fast, fighting the rolling nausea in his stomach.

He’s dead. He fucking died. Not even in a cool, impressive way. Not even in some sacrifice to save the world. He fell off a fire escape because of a shove and died. He could almost laugh at the very idea if it didn’t mean that his life was literally over.

All lingering positivity from yesterday has vanished. This _isn’t_ something he can do. He doesn’t want _this_ life. He wants New York, _his_ life back, _his_ Natasha back, _his_ Phil back. He doesn’t want anything more from this imposter life.

It doesn’t even register as first that he’s being spoken to. The soothing hand on his back and the voice mumbling off to his side are both actually happening. He can't discern what’s being said to him, he can't remember curling into a ball with his face in his pillow, he can’t- he just can't. 

Phil doesn't ask what's wrong or coo at him like he does Emily. He talks to him, voice low and words meaningless, that point of contact with his hand entirely unmoving. 

Eyes closed, it's easy to imagine this all happening somewhere else. It's easy to sink into a familiar memory. 

Dying in Marburg with Phil’s voice in his ear, trying desperately to hold all of his insides on the inside. The touch hadn't been there, then, but his own hands had felt foreign enough that it may as well have been. Phil’s voice was the same then, talking nonsense, keeping cool, refusing Clint’s repeated goodbyes. Even when he'd shown up with the evac, he stayed cool, when his suit was ruined with Clint’s blood he still refused the goodbyes. He just kept talking to him. 

He's in bed. There's no blood, but Phil is there in the same way as he had been in Marburg. The scar on his stomach healed years ago and is faded from time. 

“You with me?” They're the first words he can make out clearly. A check in that doesn't ask for too much in a response. 

“Yes.” He chokes against the ‘sir’ stuck in his throat from habit. 

“Okay,” Phil allows the short answer and presses for nothing more.

Nothing moves for a very long time. Not even Phil’s hand on his back moves in comforting circles, it stays a motionless, solid touch. A sound from the baby monitor is what breaks them both out of the complete stillness in the room.

“I’m gonna grab her.” Phil’s voice is still as level and calm as before. “Should I bring her in?”

Clint nods without removing his face from his pillow. While Phil is gone, the traces of his sounds making their way to Clint only vaguely, he realizes that his face is damp. Had he actually cried? He didn’t remember tears happening.

He’s in the same position when Phil returns with Emily in his arms. Phil leans against the headboard and Emily leans against his chest holding her own bottle to her lips. Clint shifts, still curled into his protective ball shape, until his head rests near Phil’s hip. One hand holds Emily’s feet away from head kicking territory and the other rests in Clint’s hair.

His thoughts swirl like they’re circling a drain. How disruptive he’s being, how he can’t even begin to explain, how little he deserves someone who takes something like this in stride the way Phil does. How little he ever deserved to have Phil, no matter how badly he’d wanted. 

Somehow, sleep returns.

The room is empty when he wakes again, it takes a lifetime to drag his heavy limbs up and out of bed. The bathroom mirror reveals without discrimination what a hot pile of human disaster he looks like. He can only stand to glance briefly before tossing himself into the shower. The hot water does manage to clear his head enough to feel a bit less like walking death, but the guilt hangs over his head.

Phil tangles his fingers into still damp hair when Clint folds into the couch next to him. The TV drones softly in the background and the smell in the air suggests that breakfast had been made at some point. 

“Feeling better?” he asks. Emily on his lap is already staring up at Clint and smiling.

“A bit,” Clint answers shortly.

“Wanna talk about it?” One of Phil’s fingers twitches against Clint’s ear.

Emily’s hand looks so tiny wrapped around Clint’s index finger. He rubs the pad of his thumb gently over her fingers. “No.”

“Okay,” Phil accepts. “Wanna watch cartoons and not think about it?”

He noticeably relaxes into his seat when Clint smiles somewhat. Emily squirms her way into his lap where she lounges and coos and chews on her fingers. Oddly, the quiet sounds and the drool only relax him further, the warmth while she lounges and the low volume as the TV plays a cheerful song about friendship is nice. The sun shining through the window at a high angle is really the first clue that it’s no longer the early morning it had been when he first woke up. 

“What time is it?” he asks, dreading knowing how long he’d fallen back asleep for.

Phil glances at the watch on his wrist. “Almost noon.”

“Jesus.” His head drops back against the couch, the guilt that had been subsiding comes rushing back in waves. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“Clint.” Phil has him silent in just a word. “It’s okay, you needed it.”

“I should have been up,” Clint says. “You shouldn’t have to do it alone.”

“She’s 9 months old,” Phil dismisses his words. “It’s not hard. We got to hang out.”

Clint forces himself to nod in agreement. The guilt is still there, but he chokes it back down. 

He doesn’t bring up the panic, doesn’t ask for an explanation, he keeps true to the plan to watch cartoons and not think about it. Time passes and Clint returns to some kind of normal state. They have lunch together, which also helps him feel a bit more human again. 

How can Phil be so okay with Clint acting like he's a complete basket case? It doesn't make any sense. Sure, Coulson had always had an unreal amount of patience with those he worked closely with, especially Clint if everyone was being honest with themselves. This is above and beyond, though. Then again, maybe it’s a marriage thing. It’s not like Clint knows much about how a successful marriage works.

There isn’t an ounce of him that considers maybe this is okay or that he deserves this. He knows he doesn’t. People like Clint don’t get to live lives like this, not outside of complete mental breakdown hallucination psychotic episodes or whatever Bruce’s research would have shown.

Dinner is outside again, followed by Emily finally getting her chance to explore a bit of nature around her. She reacts to the grass on her feet, unsure at first, stretching away from it every time Phil tries to set her down. Something about her legs sticking straight out in front of her hits Clint just so and he can’t stop laughing at it.

Eventually, she adapts and stands in the grass, walking and wobbling with a strong hold on each of Clint’s hands. She trusts him so much, it can be a lot to think about at times. It’s difficult to feel worthy of it.

Night comes once more. Phil settles closer to Clint than most nights and talks and talks until Clint can’t keep his eyes open any longer.

\----

Waking up is fuzzy and slow, and so alarmingly bright he can barely manage to open his eyes. His mouth is dry and his throat scratches and seizes when he tries to voice his dissatisfaction. When he attempts to sit up, his entire body erupts in aching pain; he fights the impulse to cry out.

“You’re awake.” The voice isn’t immediately recognizable to him. Distant and fuzzy, but it’s not Phil.

His eyes crack open to a blinding white room. He struggles with squinting eyes to get a good look around. The colors around him start to come into focus, and the first thing his eyes manage to catch is bright red.

“Natasha?” he asks into the room. He can’t tell if anyone else is around, his vision refuses to get any clearer than the colorful fog it’s landed on.

“It’s me,” she confirms. Cold hands grab one of his arms, he can tell she’s close to his bed. “You’re here, you’re okay.”

“Nat.” His voice croaks, he can feel the tears coming in the tingle in his throat before he can do anything to stop them. He tries to say something else, ask where he is, why he can’t see, what happened, but his voice is lost. He gets pulled into the familiar smell in the familiar arms of his best friend and cries and cries until he’s exhausted himself all over again.

When the tears finally stop and he’s sure his face is covered in snot, Natasha’s weight settles onto the bed next to his hip and presses a tissue against his face and cleans him up. If it were anyone else, he’d shove them away. With Nat, he’d do the same for her in a second, he can allow her to take care of him. 

“I thought-” he has to stop to clear his throat. “I thought I was dead.”

“Clint.” Her fingers tangle in his hair, his face buries back into her neck, warm and safe. 

Natasha helps get a straw into his mouth for a much needed drink of water, lets him blow his nose properly, lists his numerous injuries to him. One arm broken, in a sling, damaged ribs, spine, concussion, he gets the picture after that. It pretty much explains why he feels like he lost a fight with a train.

“Mr. Barton.” They’re interrupted by, presumably, a doctor before they can carry on their conversation any more. “Can you talk?”

“She stays.” He’ll admit he clings to Natasha a little, afraid of the very idea of her leaving his side right then. It helps when she clings back, her hold on his hand the tightest he can ever remember it. 

“Sure,” the doctor agrees. Normally there would be arguing, Clint’s sure, this must be some Stark-paid doctor to be willing to let it go. 

“Mr. Barton-”

“Just Clint,” he interrupts. “Sorry.”

“Clint,” the doctor corrects. She's standing much closer, still a blur, but louder. “I’m going to check your eyes, okay?”

The doctor’s voice is level and calming, exuding professionalism with every syllable, but not in the unapproachable and stiff way. Kind of like Tony, actually, if Clint thinks about it. He nods to the question, and can see a light flashing at and away from his face quickly.

“Your vision will return, probably at about the same level it was before.” Clint sighs in such deep relief, dropping back into his pillow to concentrate all his will into stopping his eyes filling with tears all over again. Everything aches when he moves, but he can’t bring himself to care. His eyes will be alright. “Took a pretty nasty hit to the back of your head, vision blurring and concussion isn’t a very rare combination.”

He’s no stranger to head injuries in all his years of risky behavior, but this all still seems like so much.

“You came very near to never walking again, honestly,” the doctor adds. “The blow to the head came right after one to the spine, you’re very lucky.”

Natasha’s hand squeezes against Clint’s a little bit tighter, but she remains silent. Clint squeezes back, he knows the feeling.

“I’ve fallen before,” Clint points out. “I’ve never been out of it like that for days at a time. What happened?”

“We had to induce a coma to protect your brain,” she explains in that same calm tone. Natasha’s hand squeezes again; she hadn’t approved. “With the swelling and trauma, not doing so would have made things much, much worse.”

The sound of paper and pen comes from the direction of the vague blur of dark hair white labcoat, flipping through records. 

“I’ve been told to keep things brief, but I’ll answer any questions you have,” she says. “You will heal, though. Good as new, if things go well.”

It sounds a bit like a warning, and Clint wonders if his medical ward hating history was part of his patient debrief when coming in for care. He’s more or less past that, at this point. Turns out healing is made a lot easier when you suck it up and let people do their jobs, who knew. Not like he’s going to be hobbling anywhere anytime soon in this pain.

He thanks the doctor and she leaves with her clicking shoes, disappearing into the noise of the hospital.

“What the hell happened that day?” Clint hisses as soon as he’s sure she’s far enough gone. “Who was attacking?”

Natasha remains quiet far too long, the hesitation just as unusual as her radio silence had been in the days before the attack. It doesn’t do much to reassure Clint.

“It was SHIELD,” she says. “Hydra.”

“Hydra?” Clint knows the name, of course. Anyone in his line of work would know what Hydra was, but as a figment of the past. “Like, Nazis? Isn’t Hydra long dead?”

“Not dead,” Natasha corrects him. “Dormant, waiting, inside the walls of SHIELD. All the way up to Pierce.”

Clint feels like he’s been thrown into a tub of ice water. He’d dedicated his life to SHIELD, to their cause. He’s killed for SHIELD, more times than he can count, was recruited and convinced he was saving himself from the wrong side of the law. The whole time with no idea that he was working under something far worse than any of the unsavory things he’d done in his past. 

“Fury?” he asks.

“Pierce tried to have him killed for getting in the way.” Her hands are still soft on his forearm, fingers cold but familiar. Her words take a moment to catch up to him, already he’s so tired again.

“Tried? You said-” He’s pretty sure he’s remembering correctly, that phone call with Nat that seemed to kick off the most batshit insane weekend of his life.

“He faked it,” she confesses. “He knew they were coming for him.”

“Jesus.” All this information is making him dizzy, or it might be the concussion. His memories are choppy at best and there are so many rapidly spinning questions in his mind that it’s hard to choose just one to voice.

“Sitwell called me that day. He lied about Fury,” he informs Natasha. He can feel her go tense next to him and he knows. “He sent the attack?”

“Most likely.”

“He was Hydra?” Clint chokes against a sad laugh. “Bastard.”

“If it helps,” she offers. “He's dead.”

“Not really.” The sour taste of betrayal lays in his mouth. He’d trusted Sitwell as much as any other agent in his circle. They’d worked together endlessly from training up to strike team, he was right up there with Coulson, he’d saved Clint’s life on more than one occasion. “How?”

Natasha pauses again, her thumb tapping out a wobbly rhythm against the back of his hand.

“Nat?” He’d been worried about her silence before, down to his marrow, he’d worried for her. Those feelings have all come right back to the surface. “What happened?”

“The Winter Soldier.” She answers in almost a whisper. “He’s with Hydra. I was shot, he damn near killed Steve.”

“Jesus,” Clint hisses. “He’s real?”

The Winter Soldier is more myth than reality, Clint had thought. A title for the top assassin at the hands of the highest bidder, a title responsible for some of the most high level kills in the industry as long ago as the 1950s. Most people in the industry, including Clint, disregard the very idea as a ghost story. The Winter Soldier is the boogeyman for spies, and Clint feels like he’d just discovered that not only is the boogeyman real, but he’d been secretly living in his closet all along. He’d heard the story of Natasha’s last run in with the soldier, knew she never expected to survive if they ever met again. That is, if he’s even the same man who had shot her before.

Clint’s brain catches up with Natasha’s words. “Steve’s hurt?” He tries to sit up -- it hurts his everything so he gives up. 

“He’s doing a lot better than you are,” she informs him. “Someone pulled him out of the Potomac, he’s convinced it was the soldier himself.”

“What I wouldn’t give for super soldier healing right now,” Clint groans. He’s going to be out of commission for weeks and Steve is probably already back up and running like new. That’s just not fair.

He’s exhausted, sore, angry, whatever, the whole damn rainbow of emotions. After three days of trying to accept death, living in Wisconsin and pretending everything is a-okay, he doesn’t want to go back to sleep and return there. He fights it with everything he’s got.

“Are you alright?” It should have been the first thing he asked.

“I will be,” Natasha answers. She sounds sure of it, and Clint believes her. “Clint, SHIELD is… SHIELD is gone, it was the only way.”

Clint’s cheeks puff with the force of the breath that wooshes out of him. His decades of working for good was not only a lie, but it’s also gone, ripped away from him in his sleep. The revelation feels terribly similar to the police informing him at ten years old that his parents had died, that the only family he’d ever known had been taken away from him by his father. SHIELD had become his new family…

SHIELD had become Natasha’s family, too. She lost just as much as he has in this. They still have each other. He’s not alone, not a child, they don’t have to pick up and run away to the circus. 

“Everything?” he asks.

“It’s all out there,” she responds. “Every last secret.”

He can’t see, but he knows what that means, how hard that is to admit. It’s not ideal for him, it’s significantly worse for someone with Natasha’s past. He opens his arms (the best he can, with one in a sling) and she wraps into a tight hug right away. 

“I was called in front of a security council.” Her voice doesn’t shake, she would never allow it. “I told them to shove it.”

Honestly it’s hard to tell if that surprises him or not, coming from her. A laugh bubbles in his chest, though, at the image of it in his mind. “Good girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wrote this whole thing & halfway through my brain went, "hey, idiot, sitwill dies on the bridge." Well now he dies a little later bc I needed him and I said so.
> 
> also dudes it's a year and a half in & I just JUST had the realization I should have used "clint's been having these weird dreams lately, like is any of this real or not?" as my summary and I'm so disappointed in myself


End file.
